Prey
by notmanos
Summary: A near mythical demon that feeds on vampires shows up in L.A.  and is after Angel. Logan and the group tries to figure out who brought it here while attempting to protect Angel, but that's easier said than done ...
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: The character of Wolverine is owned by 20th Century Fox and Marvel Comics. No copyright infringement intended. The characters of Angel & Buffy the Vampire Slayer are owned by 20th Century Fox and Mutant Enemy. Bob and his crew are mine - kidnap them at your own peril!_

_N.B.: Takes place shortly after "X3" and "Chosen"._

* * *

PREY

* * *

1

"Is there anything better than a runaway on a Friday night?" Bobby cackled, wiping the blood off his mouth as he shoved the body behind the dumpster.

Tim laughed, but Juan just took an impatient drag on his cigarette. Bobby glared at him, morphing back into Human face, and snapped, "What's up your ass?"

Juan blew out a steady stream of smoke before pitching the cigarette into the gutter. "There's rumors, you know, about some kinda new god boy in town. This ain't a good time or place to be feeding."

"Oh, what? That god turned to stone story?" Palmer asked, kicking at a crumpled coffee cup on the ground. It was Los Angeles, which pretty much guaranteed you'd hear a lot of weirdo stories, but the hard part was figuring out what was true or not. It all sounded equally improbable, so it was hard to pick out which was the winner. She'd been here long enough that it should have been second nature now, but somehow it wasn't. Time hadn't made anything clearer; it just seemed to muddy the waters more. "Why would a god come to L.A. in the first place? I thought this was Sodom and Gomorrah."

"No, we're just Gomorrah," Juan said. "San Francisco's Sodom."

"Whatever. Why would gods come here? Makes no sense, not to mention someone turning 'em to stone."

"Well, that guy who runs the Way Station, you know, that demon bar, is supposedly a fallen angel or ex-god or something," Tim said. He was right behind Bobby as he led the way up the street, his usual position - Palmer figured he should just change his name to "Bobby's Shadow" and be done with it. Supposedly the vampire who turned Bobby had turned Tim too, but that didn't make them instant brothers. They wouldn't be anyways, since Tim was Puerto Rican and Bobby was whiter than the residents of Beverly Hills.

"Him?" Juan scoffed. "Naw. I hear he's just an old Belial or something."

"I dunno. I went to the bar once and I saw him and it was like … damn. There was, like, a psychic pressure to his look. It was like you could tell he could make you do whatever he wanted you to do. It was creepy."

"So? Old Belials can do shit like that," Juan countered.

Tim shrugged diffidently, like he didn't want to argue, but he clearly thought Juan was full of shit. "Maybe, but … it was weird. I've never been back."

Bobby snorted derisively. "You're afraid of some old lesser demon? You're a puss."

"Have you ever met the guy?"

Bobby shrugged in a way that suggested no he hadn't, but he still didn't give a shit. "I don't go to that side of town. Most of the cows have too high a drug or alcohol content in their bloodstream. It's really depressing."

"And this place isn't?" Juan observed.

They were just south of Sunset, prowling the dark areas between streets and bigger alleys, and it was always nice to watch the typical Human street trash and thugs melt away as the four of them neared. After a while, the Humans on the street developed a kind of sixth sense about vampires and learned to avoid them as much as possible. Kids who dressed well but didn't look like tourists in a bad area in the dead of night, not at all concerned about their surroundings? Either really wasted or vampires. And the wasted usually gave themselves away quite easily.

They were just a couple of blocks out from the bus station, where the runaways converged and made for easy pickings. Too easy really - there was hardly any sport in it. It was like an all-you-can-eat buffet. It made Palmer wonder how vampires didn't get fat.

They turned down a side street where you could find the better she-male hookers, only the street was surprisingly empty. Busy night for the she-males? The cops make a bust somewhere? It was weird and kind of creepy. "They have a party in WeHo we didn't know about?" Palmer wondered, looking around. Although they could hear an argument on a distant street and dueling car stereos thudding bass heavy rap and timpani heavy Spanish music, there didn't seem to be anyone around on this block.

"I don't like it," Juan said.

Bobby snorted. "You don't like anything lately. Bitch, bitch, bitch."

Juan stopped suddenly, and Palmer almost walked into his broad back. "No, I don't. Who died and made you leader, asshole?"

Bobby turned and faced him, snarling but still in Human face. When it came down to it, Juan could probably kick Bobby's ass - not only was he bigger, but he was some big bad ass ex-gang banger from Oakland. Or so he said; truth be told, if he was all _that _bad ass, how'd he get vamped in the first place? "You don't like it, puto, you can walk," he snarled.

"Yeah, I will. Let's see how long you last without me," Juan snapped back.

It was then she heard, just below their raised voices, a whisper of wings.

It was strange to hear in the dead of night, especially in the middle of the city, and she saw movement over the street, something dark briefly occluding the street lights.

The guys continued to argue as what seemed to be a flock of small crows - what were they called, a murder of crows? - converged in the middle of the street. No, they didn't exactly converge - they seemed to fly into a central point, gathering together … no, piling into one big …

It wasn't a bird. You'd think a whole bunch of birds would have made one big bird, but all these birds had gathered together to make a man. Hadn't that happened in The Crow movies? That was pretty cool. Only now it didn't seem so cool. She was tapping Juan on the back, but he had so far been ignoring her.

"What?!" he roared, spinning to face her. But by now the man was walking across the street towards them, and they all turned to look. He had an odd gait, almost like his knees didn't bend properly, and his legs seemed really long under a long black coat that gleamed like oil under the streetlights.

No, not oil - feathers. Tightly packed black feathers that almost looked like alligator skin or something, but revealed its true nature in soft edges, and it wasn't just a coat. Was it folded wings? Wings that swooped around him, covered him like a cloak. He had short black hair with the same oily, feathery sheen, and a sharp nose that was beaklike in the extreme. His eyes had wide, horizontal pupils, and no whites at all - it was just black pupil and golden iris. He looked like a pale, angular Human with hawk like features, not that bad looking, although that was spoiled a bit when he grinned at them, revealing fangs a vampire would have been proud of. He smelled like … what? Bad news.

"What the fuck are you supposed to be?" Bobby challenged.

"Your doom," he replied, his voice as sharp as glass. And in a blink he'd gone from several feet away to right in front of Bobby, a movement so fast and fluid it barely registered as a blur, even though afterward Palmer felt the breeze from wings almost as an afterthought.

It had Bobby by the throat and the jaw, and Tim lunged to grab the crow man, but one of his wings lashed out and sent Tim flying into a wall so hard that she could hear bones snap like toothpicks on impact. He had arms, but he also had wings, and that seemed unfair somehow.

She and Juan stood frozen as the bird man moved close enough that it looked like it was going to kiss him, but instead this stream of ghostly light suddenly emitted from Bobby's mouth and went straight into the bird man's mouth like cigarette smoke. It didn't last long, just long enough for Bobby to go limp and suddenly burst into ash. What the fuck had just happened?

The crow man turned his bird eyes on them, and they were now glowing with a sinister, spectral light. "Where's the one with the soul?" he asked, his voice like shattered crystal.

But neither of them answered him, mainly because they were already running for the hills.

* * *

Kier opened his eyes to a bunch of guys who looked barely nineteen, their eyes lined heavily with eyeliner (guyliner), lip-synching to a song that sounded generically modern. Kier watched through squinted eyes for almost a full minute, and still wasn't able to identify the group. They were Panic At The Fall Out Of Red Mars Romance, emo-screamo bands thrown in a blender and pureed to mush. This made him feel really old.

Well, he was really old. If he was alive, he'd have been … oh holy shit, would he really have been almost forty?! Oh god, he'd have been some sad old queen eking by on extra work and still going to auditions boasting of his one "X-Files" appearance. Brendan never would have even looked twice at him, not unless he was into older guys, and he didn't seem to be. Well, unless you counted Logan, but Logan didn't count, as he aged so slowly he might as well have been one of those big Easter Island heads. And he had those great pecs - you couldn't take that away from him.

Kier started looking around for the remote - he had no memory of the t.v. being turned to MTV2 - and noticed it propped partially beneath Bren's thigh. They had both fallen asleep on the sofa, just exhausted after such a long day and night, but it was slightly disheartening somehow. Especially disheartening since he was a vampire and Bren was only half-Human. They were supposed to have more stamina, right?

He reached for the remote, but hesitated, as he wasn't sure he could grab it without waking Bren up. It gave him a moment to look at the tattoos now covering both of his arms, from the top of his hands to his shoulders. Okay, they weren't tattoos, they were marks, the celestial UPC codes of the Gorgons. How heart shaped black leaved vines became the calling card of the Gorgons he had no idea, and if Rags knew, he hadn't shared the information. Or at least he hadn't shared it intelligibly.

Bren was wearing a tank top and surfer shorts, as it had been a ludicrously hot day and their air conditioner was on its last legs … at least according to Bren. Being undead meant that temperature variations really didn't enter your sphere of notice unless it got balls falling off cold or bursting into flames hot. In the spirit of things, Kier had stripped down to his boxers, but Bren knew he wasn't bothered by the heat in the least.

Would Bren change more now that he was the Gorgons chosen or champion or whatever? Bren said no, he'd just learn a couple of spells and shit like that, but he'd be the same person he always was. But Kier wasn't so sure. After all, this was no small thing, and no matter how he soft pedaled it, it was a big fucking deal. Why had gods been trying to kill him if it wasn't? Logan had said that some gods had felt threatened, that being half-Human was too Human for their taste, but that didn't really explain anything. If it was a nothing thing, if Bren just got cool tattoos and that was the end of it, why would any god feel threatened? That didn't track.

There was something else - there simply had to be. Either Rags hadn't told Bren about it yet, or Bren was keeping it from him. And if he was keeping it from him, he knew where he stood, didn't he? Ah, insecurity. He was pretty sure he left that behind with his humanity, but apparently not.

He slipped the remote out from under his leg, but it woke him up. As Bren sat back straighter and opened his eyes, he asked reflexively, "What did I miss?"

"I have no idea. We fell asleep in front of the television like some boring old couple," he said, shutting off the set and tossing the remote onto the coffee table, beside the open box full of pizza remains. "Next thing you know, we're going to move to some gayer than gay subdivision outside of Palm Springs, get some kind of annoying designer dog and wear matching sweater vests. Stake me now."

"It'll never happen," Bren assured him.

"Why not?"

"I don't like dogs."

He stared at him with sarcastic hate. "Oh, and I like sweater vests, huh?"

Bren smiled sleepily. "I don't know. You do have weird tastes sometimes -"

Kier grabbed him and tickled him, pinning him down to the couch as he laughed and tried to squirm out of his grasp. Unless he let his Brachen side out, he didn't stand a chance. "Them's fightin' words, smart ass."

"Okay, okay, I give up," he claimed, holding up his hands. "Some vampire you are. You fight like a sissy."

"Says the guy who caved in due to tickling."

"You fight dirty."

"I am dirty," he replied grinning. "I thought that's what you liked about me."

"What a corny thing to say," Bren replied, grimacing humorously, but he still put his arms around him and let him kiss him.

Things were just getting good - Kier had just peeled Bren's shirt off and was kissing his sleek chest - when there was a loud pounding at their door. They both groaned, just a little too used to this kind of thing to be really surprised, just disappointed. Kier looked down at him, and asked, "Should we ignore it?" But he barely got the question out before the pounding continued.

They both sighed, and Kier got up to go to the door, as he was technically closest. "If it's Rogue, we'll pretend we're not here," Bren said. On the surface that seemed mean, but ever since she had regained her power, Rogue had been needy to the extreme. Bren had been a good friend to her, really good, but he was getting exhausted, and Kier understood completely.

He peered through the tiny peephole in the door, and saw something he hadn't expected to see: Palmer. She hadn't exactly been a friend; more of an acquaintance from the bite club. She quit a month ago, mainly due to boredom. There just wasn't any "sport" in being paid to bite a willing person. But he'd never given her his address, so how did she know where to find him? And better yet, why the fuck was she here?

Palmer - not her real name, but many vampires gave up their Human names upon being turned - was a petite woman with long, sleek black hair and dark, piercing eyes, changed at the age of twenty two. She looked at least half Latina, although she had never mentioned it. She was wearing a red satin crop top, a fitted black leather jacket, tight denim capris weighed down with numerous gold chain belts, and treacherous looking heels. She also looked pale and wide eyed with panic, so much so that he could almost smell it through the door.

He opened the door, mainly out of shock. "Palmer? What the fuck - "

"Kier, you gotta let me in!" She interrupted. "I'm not sure if he followed me or not!"

Bren had come up behind him, pulling his shirt back on. "Friend?" He asked him.

Kier glanced back over his shoulder. "Kinda. She was at the bite club with me."

"Trustworthy?"

Kier was forced to shrug, but added, in a low whisper, "I can handle her."

Bren nodded once, as that was all he needed to know. "Come in," Bren told her, and as soon as the invisible barrier fell, she lunged inside the apartment and slammed the door, throwing the locks for him.

That was one of the oddities he'd discovered living with Bren. It was no matter that he was living here, and that Bren was half Brachen - Kier couldn't invite another vampire in; Bren had to, or they weren't coming in. And since he was the Gorgon's champion and he was some kind of special vampire, you really wouldn't think any vampire besides Angel would ever want to be invited in here.

As soon as she was done locking the door, she leaned against it, as if she could hold it with her weight. "What's this about?" Kier demanded.

"It was a Kalivrana," she said, and gave Bren a brief once over. "Wicked tats."

"Kalivrana?" Kier repeated. "They don't exist. They're bedtime stories old vampires tell new ones to scare them."

"Kalivrana?" Bren asked him.

Kier shrugged. "Some kind of demon that supposedly feeds off vampires."

"It's no myth," she said. "One of them just killed my friend right in front of my eyes." She licked her lips nervously, an oddly Human gesture that communicated her fear more strongly than her rank scent, and then delivered the coup de grace. "And it's looking for your boss."


	2. Chapter 2

2

Logan had wracked his brain, and just couldn't figure it out. He saw Xavier die. How could he be alive?

Bob had a theory - he was a powerful telepath, so maybe he just did a brain swap with someone. Which sounded really, incredibly far fetched, but so did someone recovering from death, which he himself had done a couple of times. Could Xavier do that? If so, whose brain did he replace? And why hadn't he contacted the school to say he was still alive?

He hadn't, as far as he could tell. Storm hadn't mentioned it, and you'd think she would have. Neither had Piotr or Kitty - and he heard from Kitty a lot. She had taken to emailing him weekly, mainly on bullshit he didn't care about going on at the school. He had no idea why he was on her email list, but Bob had a theory on that too. He was of the opinion that most of the kids at the school were terrified of him, and yet idolized him in what he referred to as the "Han Solo syndrome", because "no one ever wants to be Luke Skywalker; they always want to be the outlaw hero". Which kind of pissed him off, mainly because he didn't like any theory that included "Star Wars" in it. Thanks but no thanks.

When he accidentally located him, he was in England. So he emailed Srina and asked her to keep her ears and eyes open for a new strong telepath in the area, since she seemed to have an "in" within the British mutant community. She said she would, but he hadn't heard back from her yet, making him a little nervous. What if she tried to get close to him? What if he decided to erase himself straight from her memory? Normally he'd say Xavier wouldn't do that, but now he didn't know what he was capable of. People could surprise you, and not always in a good way.

Damn it. He should have known better than to contact her. She was always a bit reckless … which, frankly, was apparently how he liked his women. Women who weren't reckless wouldn't take a chance on him. But she'd push, get in closer, try to figure out who the new teep on the block was. Maybe he should have emailed Hashim, who was at least a vampire and totally immune to telepaths, but they weren't on great terms now, and where did you email a vampire gang lord? They were hard to Google.

Well, there was Ruby, wasn't there? She used to work in MI-5's mutant crime division, right? She probably still had friends there, and they'd know if a new telepath entered the scene. Maybe he'd ask Giles to talk to her about it, because he doubted she'd take his call. How did a werewolf ever get brave enough to bite her? That must have been one ballsy werewolf. She was one scary lady.

He checked the time on the laptop's screen, and wondered if Giles was asleep yet - or up yet. Could go either way. After having been up so long while trying to protect Bren from pissed off gods, he'd went to bed and slept for nearly two days straight - he almost never did that except when he was severely injured and his body needed a load of recovery time. But now that he'd gotten caught up on all the sleep he'd missed, he was good. He could stay up for a day or two with no problem; his old road habits had kicked back in. That was probably good, although it would eventually wear him out again.

He took a swig of his beer and wondered if there was something good in Bob's magic fridge when the phone rang. It seemed kind of startling, mainly due to the lateness of the hour. Did a late night phone call ever bring good news?

He answered, and was surprised to hear Giles on the line, sounding a bit tired but otherwise alert. "You don't happen to know where Angel is, do you?"

Logan was surprised by the bluntness of the question. This could only mean something bad. "If he's not at his apartment, he's probably patrolling. Why?"

"He gave no hint where he might be patrolling?"

"No. What's this about?"

Giles sighed heavily, and Logan could easily picture him rubbing his eyes. "Kier just called me and said an old friend of his from the bite club claimed to have encountered a Kalivrana downtown, and that it was looking for Angel. We need to find him, now."

"Kalivrana?" Why did that sound familiar? "I'm guessing it's extremely dangerous."

"To vampires, yes. People should be fine. At least we don't have to worry much about collateral damage."

"They're only a threat to vampires?" That was a new one.

"Yes, they feed off their specific energy. They're the only known natural predator of a vampire, in fact."

"Really? So why isn't L.A. crawling with them?"

"They're not native to this dimension. Which seems to indicate that someone brought it here."

"Someone after Angel. Wow - he's pissed off as many people as I have."

Giles let out a noise of mild humor; too refined to be a grunt, not quite a scoff. "Possibly even more, although I wouldn't bet on it. Do you think you can locate him? We need to get him inside and to a safe area until we can determine who sent the Kalivrana after him."

"What's a safe area?"

"Anywhere that isn't his apartment or the office."

Logan sighed, aware that that was probably Giles's way of telling him to take on Angel as a roommate. "What's the powers of a Kalivrana?"

"Flight, the ability to transubstantiate into what appears to be a flock of birds, heightened senses, incredible physical strength."

"So, a real bastard?"

"I'm sure you could hurt it, Logan, but I'd avoid a fight with it if at all possible." He paused briefly. "Do you think you can find him?"

"Yeah," he grumbled, not looking forward to this. Why couldn't Bob be back yet and take these powers away from him? He wasn't getting any more comfortable with them. "I'll go get him. I'll call you back when it's done." He decided he'd ask about Ruby later, maybe when he had some leverage.

It wasn't difficult doing the search, he just hated the foreign feeling of power rushing through his mind, and the feeling of intrusion. He closed his eyes and called up all those meditation techniques he'd learned but pretty much never used, clearing his mind and finding that strain of Bob energy thrumming through the background of his mind like a neon wire. He then thought of Angel - and bam, there he was, outside a bar a couple miles north of here, stalking a couple of vampires who didn't yet know they were fucked.

Logan opened his eyes, breaking the view, and shut the laptop, putting it on the table. Bob had a garage downstairs, so he didn't have to worry about finding some wheels.

But finding Angel before the Kalivrana found him? Well, he wasn't sure. He supposed he'd find out.

* * *

The two vampires looked like rough customers. They were both tall and pale and on the skinny side, dressed in denim and leather like two middle class guy who liked to pretend they were bikers on the weekend. But the tallest one had a shaved head and a tattoo on his naked scalp of a heart pierced by a dagger, bleeding down the side of his head, where a dagger shaped earring dangled from his right earlobe. The slightly shorter one had a modern style Mohawk, which was very short and spiky, like a frilled spine on his head, dyed a violent yellow-orange. He also had a nose stud that occasionally caught a glint of light from a neon beer sign.

And even though Angel thought they were both unattractive, both guys found girls tonight. The skinhead had a petite blonde in a hot pink miniskirt, while the guy with the Mohawk had found a slightly chunkier Asian girl in pleather pants. The girls sounded drunk and giggly, and the guys were pretending to be mildly baked, but as they steered them around the back of the bar, supposedly to look for their "car", their was an obvious change in their demeanor. The girls were too drunk to notice, but the guys ceased being loose limbed and casual; their expressions morphed from slightly goofy to sharp as razor blades. They were keeping their Human faces for now, but Angel knew it wouldn't be long before their features shifted and the girls realized the danger they were in, too late to do them any good.

They were unaware of him, or at least had dismissed him as just another vampire prowling the streets, and he followed in the shadows, getting closer to them. Finally he decided that it was now or never, and made his move, grabbing the Mohawked one and yanking him away from his date. "Little young for you, don't you think?" Before he could respond, Angel slammed a stake through his heart and made him explode into dust.

The girls looked horrified, eyes wide and mouths open, and the bald one let go of his date and lunged at him, throwing a right cross that Angel stepped back to avoid, and then he grabbed his arm and swung him face first into the wall. "I'd run if I were you," he told the girls, as the skinhead threw back a hard elbow and clipped him in the jaw.

Angel staggered back, giving himself some room, and blocked a kick the skinhead attempted to land as he spun around. The vampire came back with another wild right, an easy block, but it was a feint that allowed him to land a rabbit punch in the stomach. Still, Angel responded with a flattened palm to the underside of the chin that made the vamp's head snap back violently and fall back towards the wall. Angel took advantage of this and slammed the stake home, only to have it shatter in his hands.

A long splinter shoved back, slicing deep into the pad of his thumb, and as he let out a slight gasp of pain the vampire took advantage of his momentary distraction to hit him with a backhanded fist across the face. Angel stumbled back into someone's Honda.

"Kevlar, bitch!" The skinhead crowed triumphantly. "Think I don't know about you, Angel? Traitor to his own kind. Boy, you're a total fucking dickhead in any form, ain't ya? Human, vampire, vampire again, but with some kinda pansy soul … Jesus fucking Christ, man. Can't you do anything right?"

Angel wiped a little blood from the corner of his mouth, but didn't bother responding, mainly because he saw the dark movement behind the skinhead. He hadn't sensed it yet, but he never would. Angel decided to just let it happen.

A slender blade suddenly burst through the vampire's throat, and no one looked more shocked than the skinhead. "Adamantium, bitch," Logan growled, then ripped the blade through the rest of his neck, lopping his head off. Logan stepped through his dust cloud before he could even completely dissolve. "He was pretty obnoxious, wasn't he?"

"I think the head tattoo was a giveaway. What are you doing down here?"

"Lookin' for you. C'mon, we gotta get outta here."

"Something going on?"

"Yeah. I'll explain on the way. Got the bike parked on the street." Logan started off, leading the way, but Angel stayed where he was, a bit confused.

"Wait. What's going on? You can at least give me the shorthand version."

He turned back with a scowl. "Shorthand? There's a Kalivrana after you."

Angel stared at him for a moment. Although a lot of people were under the impression that Logan was humorless, he actually had a dark, deadpan sort of humor that Angel had always tagged as British. Logan was Canadian, so that was close, temperamentally if not exactly geographically. He could be kidding and it would actually be hard to tell. Was this one? "Are you serious?"

He fixed him with a glare that said this wasn't a joke. "Would I even know what the fuck a Kalivrana was if Giles hadn't told me?"

Fair enough.

He wasn't thrilled about being a passenger on Logan's bike (which wasn't Logan's at all, but clearly one of Bob's - although the difference was kind of academic at the moment), but at least they didn't have far to go. They went back to Bob's place in the warehouse district, but Angel waited to ask why until they were in the garage.

"Giles is really that worried that it'll kill me?" Angel replied, a bit surprised. He wasn't sure if he should be flattered or offended.

Logan shrugged, going up the stairs to the loft above. "He seems to think this is a bad motherfucker. But you know, if somebody brought it here to get you, we have one suspect at the top of the list."

"Wolfram and Hart."

"It's almost boring, isn't it? I wanna say they couldn't have, 'cause they'd be the logical suspect, but the Organization has come after me dozens of times, and the fact that they were the obvious suspects never deterred them."

Bob's loft was best described as "eclectic", and it was odd to see Logan inhabiting a space so aggressively oddball, and yet it made some degree of sense. No, Logan would have never bought an electric blue sofa or decorated with rainbow colored tiki head lights or an intricately painted didgeridoo or gotten a purple shag carpet (who made that?), but Logan would adapt to it, mainly because it wasn't his to worry about. He lived like a man always five minutes away from packing a bag and running away; he lived like he was hunted, which was probably a fair assessment. Bob lived as loudly as possible, because he could. It was also why he had no qualms about wearing leather pants, feather boas, and any damn outrageous thing he wanted; oh sure, you could start to say something, but then the next thing you'd remember would be waking up on the side of the road in Peru, dressed in a nun's habit, with six weeks of your life and memory just gone. It was the joke about the eight hundred pound gorilla - where does he sit? Anywhere he damn well wants. For much the same reason, Bob wore and did whatever the hell he wanted. Who was going to stop him?

"We could pay them a visit," Angel suggested, trying not to stare at the painting over the couch. When he came in, he could have sworn it was an abstract, full of dark blues and purples, but now it looked like some kind of night landscape portrait. Had the paining changed shape as well as style? "Considering you have Bob's energy in you right now, you'd be their worst nightmare."

He grunted an acknowledgement, but didn't seem enthusiastic about that idea. "I'm tired of that. We walk in and we scare 'em, but it doesn't go deeper than that. I wanna hit 'em where they live."

"I've done that too," Angel pointed out. He decided to have a seat, with his back to the painting, as it was starting to unnerve him.

Logan grabbed the telephone receiver. Angel noted it was a see through phone with hot pink and neon yellow accents in the wiring. "I'm not talking about blowin' 'em up, although I'd support it. I'm talkin' about hitting the weak links." He hit a single button - speed dial - and after a few seconds, asked, "Hey, Hel, could you do me a favor? I need the home address of any Wolfram and Hart higher up. Yeah, any - I don't care who, as long as they got some pull in the place."

This was what Logan was very good at, when he took the time to think and didn't simply react - finding the weak points in anything, working the leverage, finding the tiny spot in a wall that would bring it all down if you hit it right. But if you thought about it, he was good at it because he was trained to be good at it as a shadow operative for the Organization. It was an echo of his dark past, and it could give you a shudder if you thought about it for too long; Logan had been indoctrinated to destroy, and no matter how much he had forgotten, there were still pieces of it in him. Angel could sympathize, mainly because as much as he wanted to distance himself from Angelus, the demon was always with him. But Angel knew he was lucky in that he could put a name to his demon, could feel the division between them - Logan didn't have that.

Helga didn't make him wait long. Logan started nodding to something only he could hear. "Laurel Canyon? Shit, she does well for herself, doesn't she?" He paused briefly. "Yeah, I've heard about it - I got Angel right here. Yeah, it's after him. That's what we're gonna find out." Logan hung up, and told him, "Helga says news of the Kalivrana is all over the place. The bar cleared out like there was a Slayer convention in town. She figures there's traffic jams at the Los Angeles city limits made up entirely of vampires fleeing the city."

"Probably. I don't see anyone sticking around to find out what it wants." Angel stood, risking a glance back at the painting. Now it was sundown in the Outback, complete with some kind of snake slithering over a bleached out cattle skull in the foreground. How fucking creepy was that? "You know I can't go with you. I can't enter a house where a Human lives - even a Wolfram and Hart lackey - without being invited."

Logan shrugged very casually. "I can make sure she invites you in."

And that was a problem - he was sure he would. Why did that strike him as somewhat sinister?


	3. Chapter 3

3

Logan hated knowing what a big sham life was.

It was funny how much he didn't know and didn't remember, when the amount of what he did know that was dispiriting seemed voluminous. Case in point: supposedly, the good guys always won. Oh yeah, they might lose some battles, but they'd always eventually win the war. It was just a matter of tenacity and having the certainty of correctness on your side. Which was all, of course, total bullshit.

He could hardly tell the kids at the school this, but the bad guys won as much as the good guys, or in fact a bit more. Bad things often did happen to bad people, but not always, not as karma and moral rectitude would have you believe. Shit just happened, and sometimes the bad guys prospered beyond your wildest imaginings, while your good guys died horribly, face down in a gutter somewhere. There was no balance, no true equity, and nothing was a symbol of that better than the assholes who worked for Wolfram and Hart.

Now most of these sad sacks of shit were strivers who dreamed of the big payoff but ended up nothing but cannon fodder; just blood and bodies and souls for their evil overlords. But there was a chosen few, a higher echelon, who prospered in a way that only ruthless Hollywood agents and overly pampered actors usually could. Kaya Sagawa was one of them.

It was easy to see from her house, which, while not the most expensive or even fancy by Laurel Canyon standards, was a sprawling monument of wall sized windows and blond wood often left naked, to give the whole thing an elegant but simple look. She had a huge yard protected with a high electrified fence (took him thirty seconds to beat), and a large pool in her backyard that wasn't kidney shaped more than it was liver shaped. She had an alarm system that certainly wasn't standard - there were mystical wards on it too, ones Bob's energy picked up almost right away (and dismissed, as none applied to him, or were too weak to do any good) - but Logan easily beat it and walked inside. She wasn't home, but he hoped she would be soon, as it was only a couple hours until dawn, and he needed to get Angel back inside by then.

As it was, he didn't have long to wait. He wandered through her lushly appointed but strangely sterile living room (she had soft leather furniture that must have cost thousands of dollars per piece, but barely looked used; she had what looked like a real Jackson Pollock hanging framed over an ornamental fireplace, but it was such a minor work it could have easily been a copy by a semi-talented amateur), and into the kitchen which was full of stainless steel and slate countertops and tiling. It looked clean enough to eat off every surface, as it was certainly uncontaminated by food - no one had ever cooked here in their life. He opened the big steel refrigerator for a look see, and found bottled water, a thousand dollar bottle of champagne, a two hundred dollar bottle of wine, and a take out carton from a sushi place. Nothing else. The freezer had nothing but ice and a bottle of Belvedere vodka in it. Maybe she didn't need to eat; maybe she took nourishment solely from bad intentions and the souls of mailroom boys.

Logan sat at the slate counter with the take out sushi and the bottle of wine. The sushi wasn't too bad, but it was on the verge of turning; he drank the wine straight from the bottle, and while it wasn't bad for red wine, he had no idea why it was so fucking expensive. He'd had cheaper wine which was just as good.

He had just finished the sashimi and had drank half the bottle down when he heard her enter the house, keys jingling. "In here," he said, picking at some nori with some chopsticks he found in an otherwise empty drawer.

There was a long pause of silence, one in which he knew she was considering leaving the house or maybe getting a weapon, but in the end her own arrogance prevailed, like he knew it would. She was convinced she could talk him out of whatever or sway him in some fashion. He knew Wolfram and Hart didn't think highly of his intelligence, and she thought even less of it.

She appeared in the kitchen archway, wearing a form fitting little black dress and a necklace dripping with diamonds - presumably she was at a party or some function or another that was dressier than most. She eyed him with a kind of amused disdain, which showed in her voice. "I could call the police, you know. Have you arrested."

He turned to face her, meeting her eyes coolly. "Be my guest."

This was a bluff and they both knew it. She wouldn't want to explain to police some of the things in her house, while there was no way he'd be arrested if he didn't allow himself to be arrested - cops weren't enough to stop him, even when he didn't have Bob energy in him. So this was simply an opening verbal volley - she was trying to feel him out, see what he wanted, and he wasn't going to give that easily. Time for round two.

Her almond eyes flickered to the bottle on the counter, and widen in the slightest amount of horror. "You're drinking my Merlot? That was a gift!"

He shrugged. "There's still half a bottle. And as gifts go, it was kinda crappy. There's some boxed wines that taste just like this."

"I didn't peg you as a connoisseur, Logan." Her lipstick was blood red, so red her mouth looked like a vivid wound. If she had added white pancake makeup, he'd have thought she was becoming a kabuki actress in her spare time.

"I ain't, but I have more taste buds than a normal Human, or some shit like that."

"So why do you drink so much cheap beer?"

"'Cause it numbs them. Do you know what it's like to taste someone else's body odor in the air? It's like licking the underside of a rock in a landfill."

That had the desired effect of making her scowl in distaste, and mock shudder ever so slightly. "That was an image I didn't need. What are you doing here? You have one minute to tell me."

"Or what?" he wondered. He just wanted to hear her pointless threat.

She gave him a tight, sharp smile that was as cutting as any razor. "Do you really think we can't handle you by now, Logan? Now, did you just break in to drink my wine, or was there more to your full scale war of annoyance? Did you leave the seat up, perhaps?"

There was a tap on the kitchen door that made her jump slightly, betraying her not so well buried fear. "You invited company over? That _is_ quite annoying."

"It's Angel. Invite him in."

Sagawa scoffed, turning it into a patronizing little laugh. "Hardly."

He gazed at her levelly, letting his coldness carry the weight of his message. "Why not? Wolfram and Hart lackey or not, you're Human, so he won't kill you. Me, on the other hand, I have no problem with it."

She shook her head and leaned against her metal refrigerator, as if sizing him up for a seduction. "No, Logan, that's not going to work with me. I know your weakness is women. It's always the way they manipulated you - the Organization knew it was always women who would push your buttons, make you hesitate and stumble. Especially delicate little Asian flowers like me. We're the chink in your armor. No pun intended."

He let his eyes frost over, turn hard, even though he knew he shouldn't let her get to him like that. "I don't like to hurt women. But I _have_ hurt women; I've killed them. Didn't you read the Organization's psychological profile on me? At the end of the day, I'm just a killer. Women haunt me, but they can't stop me."

She pretended to think it over, smiling faintly, trailing her hand along her collarbone like she was stroking it. "I guess Jean found that out the hard way, didn't she?"

He should have seen that coming. It stung, made his stomach clench, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to throw up or throw her through a wall. Instead, he closed his eyes, fighting his own anger, and growled, "Let him in."

"Or what, you'll skewer me?" she mocked, a trilling laugh in her voice. "Sorry, Wolverine, but I know you're actually one of the good guys, no matter your body count. You're not going to kill me."

He found that strain of Bob energy inside of him and concentrated on it, bringing it out. As he opened his eyes, he saw everything in a sharp shade of blue. "I said, go to the door and invite him in."

The smug look on her face became a strangely blank one, and she walked across the spotless kitchen to open the back door and say, "Come in."

She stepped back as Angel came in, and shut the door after him. She then seemed to snap out of her fugue state and stare at Angel incredulously. "How did you get in here?"

Angel tossed him a mildly sardonic look, and said, "She doesn't know."

He nodded a confirmation.

Sagawa looked between them in growing frustration. "Know what?"

That Bob had left him a good amount of his power while he was gone, so he could fill in for him. Apparently there were some knowledge gaps in Wolfram and Hart's homework. "Tell us what you know about the Kalivrana after Angel. Why did you bring one in?"

She looked at him, blinking in astonishment. "There's a Kalivrana in town?"

Logan snorted in disbelief. "Darlin', you smell of lies. And you gotta have a lotta balls to lie to us knowing we can tell, so you wanna start again?"

She took on a look of offense, but it wasn't very convincing. "Please. You broke into my house to make these accusations that are totally baseless -"

"Logan?" Angel asked him pointedly.

He sighed, aware of what he wanted. He supposed it was the easiest way to go about it anyways. He looked at Sagawa and called up the Bob energy once more. "Tell us the truth for once in your life, Kaya."

How had he lived without Bob's ability to push? Sagawa went loose limbed, her face lost some of its cunning, and she said, in a softer, more average voice, "We were informed of the arrival of the Kalivrana earlier this evening, but we did not bring it here. In fact, considering how many vampires we have doing grunt work for us, we don't appreciate having a vamp killer around that isn't controlled by us."

"So who sent it?" Logan asked, taking another swig of the wine.

"We don't know, but there seem to be indications that this Kalivrana is some kind of hired gun for Ombre Noire. There have been some attempts to open up a dialogue with Reignet, but there's been no response. We're considering sending the Red Wolves after him."

"Reignet is still alive?" Angel exclaimed, obviously in shock.

Logan knew then that Angel knew what she was talking about far better than he did. "Who's Reignet? The leader of this Black Shadow group?"

Angel looked at him with a pained, guilty grimace. "Yes. I know why he wants to kill me too."

"Why?"

He avoided his gaze, and he knew it was something horrible before he even said it. "I killed his family."

Okay, yeah, that would explain a lot.

* * *

_Mont-Saint-Aignan, France - 120 Years Ago_

Angelus stared out the window as he shrugged his shirt back on. The moon was new, and with clouds hiding the stars the blackness was permanent out there, as if the Earth itself was entirely swathed in shadows. It would have been nice, but he knew he hadn't gotten that lucky yet.

"You can't be leaving already," Therese said in a lightly pleading, lightly teasing voice that she probably thought was sexy. He was glad he didn't have a reflection, so she couldn't see his deep scowl of hate. "The night's young."

"And so is everyone out in it," he reminded her, buttoning his shirt, wondering if he was right about what time it was. He had to time this just right, or it would all go to hell. "Young blood is just that much more … tasty."

"The Watcher in the village wasn't enough for you?"

He shrugged expansively, made his voice casual. "What can I say? Watchers are dried up things. It's like trying to suck juice out a prune."

This made her titter, but the truth was, he wanted to kill them all. The Watchers, Ombre Noire, every single fucking one of her miserable family - and tonight was his shot.

He wanted nothing to do with the Ombre Noire, a coven of witches practicing some form of black magic that made them feared and hated across the entire continent. Now in general theory he admired them - you had to admire the truly evil bastards - but he never expected to be working for them as some kind of dog. When he spotted Therese in the crowd of the marketplace, he had no idea she was the daughter of Jean-Claude Reignet, the head warlock of the coven. He was looking for a quick bite, not some kind of weird prelude to a supernatural arranged marriage. But Therese thought he was attractive, which he hoped would spare him the wrath of her father … and it did. The only problem was, he wanted to please his daughter, and Angelus, sadly, pleased her a lot. So suddenly he was Therese's "beau" and working for the coven, even though all he had wanted was some fresh blood (okay, a fuck wouldn't have been out of the question either). But if he tried to fuck over Jean-Claude, he knew he'd turn him into a frog or something, and that crazy old bastard could do it too.

As luck would have it, the Watchers were even more eager to put an end to the Ombre Noire than he was. Jean-Claude had sent him into town to kill a woman they knew was an undercover Watcher, which Angelus was more than happy to do. Who _didn't _want to kill a Watcher?

But he wasn't a dummy. This woman, a bird thin biddy named Nora with a rather raw boned Slavic face, didn't recognize him on sight, which was another case of luck breaking in his favor. He claimed to be named Stefan, and an unhappy lackey of Ombre Noire. The Watchers were itching to destroy this coven, and he knew all they needed was a way in, a way to make an initial hit.

He gave it to them.

No, he had no love for the Watchers; in fact, he rather hoped both groups killed themselves. He broke the protective wards around the village on the south side before returning, but he "forgot" to draw the pentagram on Jean-Claude's house. Fuck that - he hoped the old bastard killed a few Watchers before they killed him. But when the Watchers hit this place, he had no intention of being here, of being caught in the bloody melee. It was going to be mostly a magical battle anyways, and he just didn't trust magic; magic was the cause of too many damn wrong things, and how could you trust what you couldn't see?

Therese got out of bed, and he heard the rustle of fabric as she slipped on a dressing gown. She crept up on him, probably thinking she was being stealthy, but he felt her approach all the way. He gritted his teeth against the impulse to backhand her across the room. She wasn't just Jean-Claude's daughter, she was a member of the coven as well, and as far as he could tell pretty powerful. He slipped his hand in his pants pocket, and felt the cool metal of the amulet the Watcher had slipped him. It wouldn't neutralize her for long, but he didn't need long - he just needed a second to strike, and then it would be all over. Poor stupid - sexy, but stupid - Therese.

She put her arms around him and squeezed up against his back with a languorous sigh. It took everything in him not to shrug her off and snap her neck like a chicken bone. "What is it with you lately, Angelus? You've been so restless. Are you unhappy here?"

He wanted to laugh, but managed to keep it down to a sneer. "Why would I be unhappy here?"

"Well, yes … but you don't seem pleased. Are we not giving you enough people to kill, is that it?"

A path had been cleared through the thin scrim of clouds in the sky, and through it he saw the faint twinkling of the morning star. Only it wasn't actually the morning star; it was the sign. Here they came.

"People to kill," he snickered. "Like I'm an attack dog. Throw me a few scraps and I'll be sated." He didn't bother to conceal the contempt in his voice.

He felt her stiffen behind him. "What are you saying?"

His hand closed around the amulet in his pocket. Even though it was worn smooth and cold, it felt sharp and hot somehow. "I'm saying we're done here, bitch," he snarled, breaking her grasp and spinning around in one fluid, fast movement. Before she even realized he'd turned, he shoved the amulet against her chest, his other arm wrapped firmly around her waist, and let his vampire face emerge. "I'm no one's pet. I'm Angelus." He then sunk his fangs into her neck and began gulping down her magically tinged blood in mouthfuls. She didn't even have time to scream or conjure up a spell before he drained her past consciousness, and while she went limp, he didn't stop until she was completely drained of blood. He dropped her, keeping hold of the amulet in case he needed it in his escape, and looked down at her pale, wilted body as he heard the screams outside, the shouts of spell arcane and familiar.

"Damn witch," he cursed, wiping her blood off the corner of his mouth. They always thought they could control everything, that nothing could beat them, especially when they were as powerful a coven as Ombre Noire.

But he was Angelus. Nothing beat him.


	4. Chapter 4

4

Giles put his steaming mug of tea down on the side table with the smallest of sighs. "Angelus helping the Watchers? Politics do make strange bedfellows, don't they?"

They were in Giles's small bungalow, neat but with a minor riot of books on wall shelves and in bookcases threatening to become a full explosion of texts. With so many odd objects and books, it was hard to call it cozy, but at least it was apparent someone interesting lived here. The scent of slowly decaying parchment made Logan sneeze when he first came in.

"He only wanted to get free of Ombre Noire," Angel said, with a chagrinned grimace. "He was kind of counting on mutually assured destruction."

"Which is a best case scenario most of the time," Logan remarked wearily. It was such a cynical thing to say he wasn't surprised at the looks that earned him.

Giles was sitting in a very English looking overstuffed armchair, looking tired and yet still remarkably awake for the hour. Angel was standing and occasionally pacing, but whenever he or Giles gave him a dirty look, he stopped. He was currently by one of the bookshelves. Logan was collapsed on a ratty sofa that was actually fairly comfortable, and went along with the rest of Giles's "old mysterious bookshop" decor. It was Angel who got things back on track. "Is it possible Reignet is still alive?"

Giles shrugged, making him scowl as if in pain. "Normally I'd say no, but his death was never confirmed, and he was a powerful old warlock. It's possible he survived and went underground to rebuild his coven."

"I thought black magic ate away at the practitioner," Logan said. And couldn't believe that he'd ever said such a thing seriously, but that's how strange his life was now.

Giles nodded, and seemed mildly impressed that he had been paying attention. "It does, but the thing about Ombre Noire is they usually sacrificed others to feed their magic. In fact, they came to the notice of the Watchers when they sacrificed an entire village in the Ukraine. That fed their magic for a year."

"And Reignet had a demon sponsor," Angel added. "I never found out who, but Reignet used to communicate with it via an old mirror."

"Which doesn't tell us a lot," Giles continued. "Mirrors are a popular form of communication between demons and others."

"A demon should be nothing. We're talking about a demon god, aren't we?"

Giles nodded faintly. "Or demi-god. Something with great power."

"Yeah well, right now I got great power. Point me towards him and I'll get this done."

Angel and Giles shared a look before Angel said, "I'm not sure it's that simple, Logan."

"I know hired guns," Logan replied. "The Kalivrana ain't gonna finish the job if the guy who's paying for it is gone. There's nothing in it for him."

"That's not the problem," Giles interjected, putting on a calm, slightly lecturing voice. "The problem is twofold. You haven't learned to control all the power Bob has given you, and Bob hasn't given you everything anyways. You could be beaten or hurt, which is not worth it."

He wasn't sure if he was being insulted or not, but decided to set that aside for now. "Could Bob do it then?"

This got another weary sigh from Giles. "The demon could be stronger than him, but still I'd say yes, he'd find a way to do it. He's proven himself to be a better demon god killer than I'd ever would have credited him for."

"Not just demon gods," Logan pointed out.

Giles frowned in a strangely thoughtful way, like that was an avenue he really didn't want to go down. "Quite. Even when he's overpowered, he seems to find a way to get the job done. I'm not sure if that resourcefulness is the Belial demon in him or the Australian in him. It can be difficult to tell those two apart at times."

"How do we kill a Kalivrana?" Logan asked, figuring having a plan B was good.

Giles's shoulders slumped, like the weight of the question was too heavy to bear. "Unknown. There's no record of one ever being killed, ever, under any circumstances."

"They're truly immortal?"

"Perhaps. There haven't been many recorded encounters with them to be certain of anything, and while they seem to loathe vampires, they have no great love of Humans either. They're not the warm and chatty type."

"Can we track it down with a locator spell?" But even as Logan asked that, he felt he knew the answer, if only because Giles hadn't done it already.

"Only if it's in a humanoid form. For some reason, it's impossible to pinpoint in its bird forms."

"And let me guess - that's its preferred form of travel?"

Giles simply nodded wearily. It was fun how things went from bad to worse so quickly.

Tracking down Reignet proved to be just as impossible. According to Sagawa, even Wolfram and Hart didn't know where he was - if he was even in the city - and Giles could do no better. Reignet had almost unlimited power, and a cloaking spell was nothing. He said he might be able to extrapolate his position by using a spell that revealed hot spots of black magic, but the problem was Wolfram and Hart was an absolute sinkhole of it, rendering almost all of Los Angeles a big black hole. If he was in the city, it would be easy to hide from such a thing, and if he was outside it, it would take a lot of Giles's energy to try and find him. Even then, Reignet might have a way to protect himself from such a scan.

Back to square one. Giles had already called everyone and told them not to come in to the office tomorrow, as he and Angel were of the opinion that anyone showing up there might be a potential hostage for the Kalivrana. This made Logan want to do it, but Angel told him not to even think about it. (Well, he was anyways.) He was kind of sorry that Marc had taken Sid and Matt and moved on to another job, as it might have been fun seeing if an enchanted bullet could kill a Kalivrana.

Their plan now was basic. Giles was going to do a bit more research, talk to some of his friends on the Watchers Council, see what he could dig up on Reignet that might help them, and Angel was to stay with him at Bob's place for now, because Bob's place was cloaked with some weird sort of glamour that rendered it invisible to everyone who didn't already know it was there. (It must have been nice to totally bend reality like that.) For now, that was the extent of their plans.

Logan didn't like this. He'd hid enough in his life and he was pretty sick of it. But then again, it wasn't his life at stake - it was Angel's. And while he may have been a bone deep evil bastard, he could hardly begrudge Reignet wanting to kill Angel, as he'd sought revenge on those who killed his family too. He was good at revenge; it took up more than half his life.

It was clear he had only one recourse. They needed to even up this fight, fight magic with magic and cunning with cunning. When they got home to the safe haven of Bob's place, Logan helped seal up the bedroom (so no stray sunlight would get in), and then retreated to the living room to put a call in to Mordred. The French bastard had his answering machine on, so he left a message, not sure he'd ever get back to him. The sun was starting to come up by then, fingers of light stabbing through the window and slowly crawling across the garish carpet, so he knew Angel wouldn't be disturbing him any time soon.

He laid down on the couch, throwing his arm over his eyes to block out the light, and started to meditate.

Clearing the mind was always the hardest part. Shutting down external stimuli was difficult, but shutting down internal stimuli was nearly impossible. Still, he focused on the greater darkness, the shadow world within him, where everything was night and all was quiet. It was the place in his mind where he would go when a telepath would barge in uninvited and he wanted to hide from them as long as he could. Not his "happy place" but his safe place. He hadn't been here in a while.

Normally he'd be at his cabin in the woods in Alberta, somewhere in the mountains, but that would have been stimuli. So instead he was in nothing; he was floating in a sensory deprivation tank of his own design. When he felt himself sinking down, he started calling out Bob's name, focusing on the blue strain of energy that hovered just below the darkness.

He imagined Bob's Sydney home and appeared there, walking through the empty living room, but he wasn't sure he was actually there. There was no response, and he had no sense of a presence. Son of a bitch, was he avoiding him? What a time to do it.

He stormed through all the mental landscapes he could think of, looking for him, but he was coming up empty. It was like he was deliberately hiding. That bastard! He knew when he needed him most, and did it on purpose.

After wasting an unknown amount of time wandering empty mindscapes, he came back to himself and sighed, wondering what his next move was.

"You could have just imagined my cell phone ringing," Bob said.

Logan tried not to jolt, but he wanted to. He removed his arm from his eyes to find Bob grinning down at him like he found this hysterical. He probably did.

Bob looked fairly tan, his hair a pale brown with sun lightened blond highlights, his hair long enough to be almost shoulder length. He wore his usual leather pants and a t-shirt that said "Allow Me To Explain Through Interpretive Dance" in yellow letters across the chest. Logan glowered at him, but that just made his smile wider. "Are you back now?"

"I'm not a hologram. Although that'd be pretty cool."

"Are you actually here, or is this still a mindscape?"

"I can pinch ya or hit ya, if you think'll convince ya." Bob went over to his fridge, opened the door, and reached in. He grabbed two absurdly big cans of beer and tossed him one as he used his hip to shut the door. "I'm willing to go so far as a tender kiss on the forehead."

"Okay, yeah, you're here." Logan said, sitting up and opening his beer. How long had he been out? The sunlight seemed to be a bit farther along now. "I take it the war is finally over."

"For now, sure. It's amazing - piss off one god, and suddenly you gotta whole buncha 'em demanding an apology. Where's their sense of humor?"

"I thought you said most gods didn't have a sense of humor."

He shrugged as he took a swig of his beer. "They don't, but god, I'm so blatantly kidding a chimp would get it. I mean, do I look all that serious to you?"

Logan stared at him with one eyebrow raised. "You think I don't know a set up when I hear it?"

"Would it kill ya to play along?"

"Yes."

Bob scowled at him, but in a mocking way. "Spoilsport. Aren't you a grumpy puss today?"

"Are you hepped up on goofballs?"

That made him laugh. "Can't a man just be happy to be back in his home dimension?"

Logan put his beer can down on the coffee table, which was shaped to look like a miniature surfboard (and quite possibly was one), and began ticking facts off on his fingers. "This isn't your home dimension. You're not a man, you're a Belial demon. You're not really a Belial, though, you're a rogue Power. What have I forgotten?"

He considered that a moment. "Nothin' mate. That seems to encapsulate it all nicely."

Logan sagged back against the sofa with a sigh. "So how much do you know?"

"About what's goin' on here? All of it. You don't need Mordred, you know. I know a witch that'll help us out. She should be enough for our big bad warlock."

Logan had a sinking feeling he knew who he meant. "I'd rather go with Mordred. He was less of a pain in the ass."

"Hey! This is my great granddaughter you're talking about! I've made people believe they were Scientologists for less."

He shook his head, refusing to even smirk at Bob's joke. Assuming it was a joke. "Can you handle this Reignet, no matter how powerful he is?"

Bob shrugged a single shoulder, but didn't seem overly concerned. "I don't care if he's hooked himself to Sy's wagon, he shouldn't be a problem."

"Sy?"

"Osiris. But I doubt it's him, as he really hates Humans and he knows I'll kick his ass if he tries something like that again."

"Again?"

"It's a long story, mate."

"They're all long stories."

Bob chuckled before finishing his beer and crumpling the can into a small aluminum ball. "True, but I figured you'd be more interested in getting this party started."

Maybe he'd taken his damn sweet time in showing up, but Logan had to give him credit - at least he showed up ready for a fight. "What d'ya got in mind?"

"We need to find out where this Reignet is holed up. You know even better than I do you don't wait for the bad guy to come to you, you go to them, uninvited, with a bunch of drunken friends in tow. Metaphorically drunk, in this case. Anyhoo, I'd normally do a panty raid at Wolfram and Hart's, but you already shook down Sagawa and you know they're as stymied as the rest of us … which is actually kind of a clue."

"How so?"

"Hiding from Giles is one thing; hiding from the whole Dark Arts Department of Wolfram and Hart? No offense to old Rupert there, but he's one guy. The Dark Arters are at least two dozen strong and mostly inhuman. If he's hiding from them, he's got mucho power. Or he's hiding in a dimensional pocket."

Logan took another swallow of his beer, not sure he liked where the drift of Bob's logic was going. "I thought only gods and very violent, noisy rituals could open up dimensional riffs."

"Generally yeah, and they're not usually that easy to travel through. For me, sure, I could run through a dozen dimensions without breaking my stride - in fact, I have - but I'm on a different level, and besides that, I'm really an energy being. If I absolutely had to, I could shed this mortal coil and pick it up again after it's been to the cleaners. In fact, I've done that too, except for the cleaners part. But Humans are physical flesh and blood things that, save for special circumstances, would get ripped to shreds trying to run back and forth between dimensions. Literally; the strain of crossing a barrier in a purely physical form flenses the flesh from the bones. It's not pretty."

"I've done it."

Bob rolled his insanely deep, bright blue eyes. "Yes, but you're a special case. Not only are you my avatar, but you can be carved up like a Christmas turkey and still be conscious and alive enough to criticize the carving technique. People not like you can't do it. Which tells us what Reignet is getting out of the deal with his demon lord."

Logan had to think about that for a moment. He had to get used to conversations with Bob again, where half of the time it was his usual bullshit, and the other half was genuinely useful information. "Indestructibility?"

"Close. Immortality."

Aw shit. "Does that mean we can't kill him?"

Bob grimaced, dipping his head side to side in an odd kind of shrug. "Yes and no. For the moment we probably couldn't kill him, but he's only immortal because of his deal with the demon lord. Deals are breakable; deals expire. We scotch the deal, and he's as mortal as anyone else."

"But we gotta break the deal first."

Bob nodded. "That's my job, mate."

Now Logan knew he was in deep shit. "What's my job?"

"You have to go and find a Lhassat demon named Ergold."

Logan waited for a punch line, but after thirty seconds it became obvious that none was forthcoming. "Why would I do that?"

"'Cause Lhassats are sensitive to dimensional variations that even I can't pick up. You know I can see dimensional thinness, but a bubble would appear as normal to me. Not to a Lhassat; they'll know the difference."

"But why this guy named Ergold?"

''Cause he owes me a favor, and he's shit scared of me. But that's the problem in finding him. He's hiding."

Logan groaned and rubbed his eyes. "Why don't you find him then?"

"If he knows I'm looking for him, he'll probably flee to Utah. And as a matter of principal I don't go to Utah - it just creeps me out. Also, I gotta go get Ammy."

He shook his head in disbelief. How did he know that Bob would return, and yet he'd still get the shitty job? "Where do I start looking for this guy?"

"My guess? Hit the demon bars that aren't the Way Station. He's a drinker. And you being you, I'm sure everybody'll be eager to talk to you and get you the fuck out the door."

That was true enough. But somehow he had a feeling that none of this was going to be as easy as Bob was implying.


	5. Chapter 5

5

Logan tried to mentally dissect where things went wrong as he smashed the Frenik demon's head into the bar. "What don't you fucking understand about "I come in peace"?!" he roared, as another demon grabbed him from behind. Logan slammed back his elbow repeatedly, until he heard bones break and the demon make a noise that was the opposite of enjoyment. Another came at him with a knife, aiming a hunting blade at his gut, but he was able to sidestep while grabbing his arm and twisting it with a violent jerk, breaking the arm and dislocating the shoulder at the same time. To add insult to injury, he threw him into another demon, and they both went down in a heap.

There wasn't much variations in their attacks. Someone hit him on the head with a whiskey bottle, and then someone else grabbed his arm from behind, opening up his midsection for a rather spiky looking demon to attack him with his claws. Logan stamped down on his leg, shattering the spiky demon's kneecap, and snapped his head back, smashing the nose of the demon holding him. Both went down screaming, and another demon swung a chair at him. He got his claw up in front of his face just in time, so the chair shattered on impact with it, but a splinter flew into his eye. He winced and slashed out blindly, sure he hit his target by the wet noise and choked yelp of pain that followed, and just feeling the breeze of a body made him guess and throw back a claw blindly. Yep, he hit something.

The burning in his eyes faded, and he opened them just in time to see the horn headed bartender pull out a rifle from beneath the bar. He ducked as the first blast echoed through the place, the demon closest to him taking a gut load of buckshot, and slashed through the rifle barrel as he jumped over the bar. He intended to head butt the guy, but the horns promised to make that an iffy proposition, so he simply said, "Sorry," and rammed a knee into his groin. He sagged, dropping the remains of the rifle, and was going to hit the floor, only Logan had a hold of his collar and didn't let him go. "I just wanna know where Ergold is, that's all. I wasn't here to cause trouble!"

In retrospect, he should have known it wouldn't go easy. Just from the vividly hateful stares that he received upon entering the bar, he should have known he was recognized as the Decapitator, and demons this drunk just had to challenge him. Was there ever a drunk male who could resist the urge to do something mind blowingly stupid? Testosterone and alcohol was a lethal mix.

Horn guy, whose face was still crumpled in pain, gasped, "I don't know -"

"Yes, yes you do. I can even smell when you're lyin', and you smell like moss. You want to try again, or do you lose your other ball?"

Tears of pain ran down his face, and Logan wondered if his complexion was usually this chartreuse, or if this was due to the smashed testicle. "I don't know where he is now. But he's probably shooting craps over at Smoke and Mirrors."

"See? Was that so hard?" He let him go, and he hit the floor like a boat anchor.

On his way out of the bar he cut off someone's arm - well, he shouldn't have tried to sucker punch him - and grabbed a miraculously unbroken beer bottle off a still standing table. He drank it on the way to Smoke and Mirrors.

Smoke and Mirrors was a Human, magic obsessed bar on the fringes of the demon section of town. And magic obsessed not in the sense of real magic, but the David Copperfield type magic. He expected that guy from Arrested Development to be out front pulling dead doves from his pants - that's how fucking tacky the place looked.

As he approached the neon lit façade - the sign was of a disembodied hand pulling a rabbit out of a top hat in buzzing neon - he heard voices that seemed to be around back, not inside. There was an alley that cut around the back of the place so he went down it, and heard a couple of distinct male voices cursing and saying things like "Sixes!" Which made sense. Demons were hardly going to play craps in a Human magic club, were they?

Just by the smell alone, it seemed Ergold was playing with a bunch of Slime demons. There were four of them and him in the back of the place, where the alley dead ended against a Dumpster. He slunk down in the shadows, watching them roll the dice, diss each other, collect money and throw it down. The only demon without a dripping rack of antlers looked a bit like a humanoid skink: it had smooth bright green skin, with a flat, oval face set off by large, slightly bulbous gold and white eyes. It had no hair, nor ears or nose; he had a pair of holes in the center of his face instead, and ear holes covered by tiny flaps on either side of his head. In an odd kind of way, he was almost adorable; he seemed like some kind of spokesdemon just waiting to happen. But the wide lapeled, violently purple suit he was wearing killed the idea - it was like something a '70's movie pimp would wear, right down to the silk paisley shirt. The fact that the suit clashed both with the shirt and his skin seemed like a colossal joke. How could he not be aware of it? Was he colorblind?

After a moment of visually appraising them - he doubted any were carrying weapons; they probably figured being demon was enough - he wandered out of the shadows and let them see him. They were so wrapped up in their craps game it actually took a minute, and even then a slime demon met him with a dismissive, "No Humans allowed in the game."

"I'm not here for the game," he replied. "I'm here for Ergold."

The little skink guy looked up at squinted at him. "I don't know you, do I?" He had the voice of a cartoon frog; it was mostly a bit high, but had a kind of throaty undertone.

"You will. You're coming with me."

He made a noise that sounded like a rabbit sneezing - he assumed it was some kind of scoff. "No I'm not. Go away."

Logan popped one set of claws, the ones in his right hand. "I'm not takin' no for an answer."

Now all the demons were staring at him. "Holy shit!" One of the slime demons exclaimed. He held the dice currently and was wearing a "Show Me Your Tits" t-shirt. "You're that … uh … guy … the Deceptirator."

That wasn't even a word! What the hell was he, the George Bush of demons? "Decapitator."

"That's what I said."

They all seemed possessed of a certain fearful tension, which was only correct. Ergold had straightened up from his crouch, but in a way that made him look like a wary gecko. "What the fuck you want with me? I never hurt nobody."

"Bob wants to talk to you."

And Logan thought they were scared before. Suddenly the slime demons stood up, as if they'd just gotten an electric cattle prod to the ass, and quickly gathered the last of the dice and the money. "Well, we're done. C'mon guys, I hear they have two for one plates of wings down at the Pussycat Parlor tonight."

"Hey!" Ergold squeaked. "What about me?"

The guy in the "Show Me Your Tits" t-shirt just shrugged. "Good luck to ya. Call us if you live." They walked past Logan, giving him as wide a berth as possible. Very soon enough, it was just him and Ergold.

Ergold picked something up off the ground and put it on his head as he stood up. Logan had thought it was some kind of flat hat, like a beret, but as Ergold plopped it on his bald scalp and centered it on his head, Logan saw it was a toupee. A stunningly awful one, slightly less realistic than Donald Trump's sad excuse for hair, it was black and fluffy in a way that actual hair wasn't unless you had a big problem with static electricity. Also, since he was a naturally hairless demon, having this big furry thing perched on his head made no sense at all, unless someone had tricked him into thinking it was a hat. The only way it could have looked worse was if it had a chin strap. "Now, Bob should know I reformed. I'm not a -"

"What the fuck is that?"

The question seemed to baffle him. "What?"

"That polecat on your head. Why the fuck are you wearing it?"

He stiffened and patted his hair, like he was trying to calm it down. "This is not a polecat. I'll have you know this is a custom designed hairpiece by Christo of Beverly Hills."

"You mean you _paid _for it?"

If a lizard could be said to look affronted, he did. His nictitating membranes clicked like lonely castanets. "Should you be talking about hair, mammal? Yours looks like a helmet."

"At least my hair isn't skinned roadkill."

Ergold scowled, which looked unsettling on a lipless and rather invisible mouth. "This is not skinned roadkill! This is real Human hair!"

"From someone's pubes?"

"You're a revolting little man, aren't you?"

Logan shrugged. "I've been called worse. Now, are you gonna come along quietly, or do I hafta cut your legs off and carry you?"

That shut him up pretty quick. Fear made him smell like boiled snake.

On the walk back, he tried to ask several times what Bob wanted with him, but Logan just told him ominously that he'd find out, which not only made him go very quiet but made him tremble a bit. He was clearly considering bolting, but Logan reminded him he was just told to bring him, not bring him in one piece. He knew he shouldn't be tormenting the demon so, but his suit and his hairpiece were really pissing him off. He had a feeling Bob disliked him for purely sartorial reasons, and if so, he could understand.

He brought the guy to the Way Station, as Bob didn't want him to know where he lived. The bar was half empty, making Logan wonder if half of them had cleared off when they realized Bob was back. The jukebox started playing Statix X's "I'm With Stupid", which wasn't a coincidence.

Bob came out of the back, and Logan gestured at Ergold. "Disco Stu, as ordered."

Bob grinned at him in an openly predatory manner, until he focused on Ergold's head, and then his grin collapsed. "What the fuck did you stick on his head, mate?"

"That is not my fault."

"Hey!" Ergold snapped, reaching up to defensively pet his toupee. "It's not like I picked it up at the Goodwill or something."

"Course not," Bob agreed. "You picked it up off the side of the road."

Ergold stamped his foot. "Goddamn it, stop making fun of my hair!"

Bob looked at Logan in disbelief. "He's really serious about it, isn't he?"

Logan nodded. He couldn't believe it either. Maybe he couldn't see his own reflection?

Bob laid it out for Ergold quite simply - if he wanted to get off his immediate shit list, he'd look for and find the dimensional bubble that Bob was sure was around. It wasn't like Ergold had a choice, but they all pretended he did. While Bob laid out a map of the downtown area and told Ergold where he wanted him to start looking, Ammy came out of the back holding a bottle of ginger beer. She looked like her usual self, meaning she was wearing combat books, black vinyl bicycle shorts over torn fishnet stockings, and a black t-shirt with "Nevermore" written across it in Gothic script. Her hair was still short and punky and as bright blue as her eyes and lips, and she seemed to have elaborate Maori style tattoos on both of her arms, encircling her biceps like bands. She'd gained a little weight since he'd last seen her, but she didn't wear it badly. He was kind of hoping she'd ignore him, but no, she came clomping right over to him. "Where's Angel?" she demanded. "He's made a dog's dinner of this, he should be here."

"The sun hasn't set yet."

" I don't give a toss. This is his balls up; he could find a way to get here."

"Sweetheart," Bob said, looking up from the map spread over the bar. "We don't know where Reignet is. We're not fighting yet."

"I don't care. He doesn't need to be a clacker, does he?"

What was more charming about Ammy - her surly attitude or the fact that you needed subtitles half the time she talked? He would give her her due as a witch; she was very good, and having god blood obviously didn't hurt. But did she have to come off like she was constantly hung over and angry about it?

Ammy got a good look at Ergold, who seemed to cringe beneath her hard blue gaze. "Why are you wearing a wombat pelt?"

Ergold made a noise of exasperation, but didn't dare say what he wanted to say to her - he was smart enough to know that it would cost him. Bob, for his part, just snickered.

Logan went to get himself a beer behind the bar, wondering where Helga was, when something odd occurred. First of all, the jukebox interrupted itself; it had been playing The Black Keys, but it seemed to pause, and then Porcupine Tree's "The Creator Has A Master Tape" started playing. At the very same moment, Bob let out a startled yelp and staggered back, bringing a hand up to his face, as Ergold grabbed his head and made a short, weird clicking noise. Pain?

Logan was going to ask, but Ammy did it first. "Grand, what is it?" She sounded genuinely concerned, not pissed for once. And hey, did she almost call him grandpa?

"Massive dimensional tear," Bob said, still wincing a bit. "Not far from here either. Bloody hell, it's a bad one."

"Really violent," Ergold added, gasping a little. Whereas Bob had been surprised but only a bit rattled, Ergold had felt this dimensional rift like someone had made it in him. He was bent over the bar, his head resting on the map. His toupee had slipped off, but he didn't seem to notice. "Who the fuck has that kind of power?"

But they already knew, even if Ergold was still in the dark.

Even over the music, Logan thought he heard something odd outside, beyond the walls of the bar. He opened the door and glanced out, barely aware of the slightly shimmery, distorting field of the glamour surrounding the Way Station. The streets looked amazingly empty, but he heard, maybe one or two blocks over, screams, the violent metal and glass sound of cars colliding with each other, and a deep thud or two whose noise he couldn't really identify, but damn if it didn't sound bad.

He wasn't sure what made him look up, but he did. And the lightly sepia tone, smogtastic L.A. sky was turning dark. Blackness was diffusing through it like ink in water, tendrils spreading out across the clouds, blocking out the sun. It wasn't the night sky either - it was pitch black, and it was _something. _Logan was smelling something like boiling tar and singed hair, and wasn't sure if it was coming from down the street or up above as the blackness spread out overhead, blotting out the sky. He still wasn't sure if it was an object or an actual living thing. If it was a living being, it was so massive his head couldn't quite wrap around it.

He felt Bob and Ammy both crowd in behind him and looked up at the new black stain that was turning the street - the entire city? - into a shadowy abyss.

"Holy shit," Bob exclaimed. That didn't inspire confidence.

"We are totally fucked," Ammy said.

Yeah, that sounded about right. Goddamn, when was he going to stop getting himself in these no win scenarios?

In retrospect, staying at the school didn't seem so bad.


	6. Chapter 6

6

It was kind of reassuring to know that even demons panicked.

Seeing what was going on, the rest of the bar emptied out, leaving him, Bob, Amaranth, and Ergold alone in the place. The jukebox was now playing REM's "It's The End Of The World We As Know It". Sometimes Logan really wanted to punch the jukebox.

"What the fuck is that?" Ammy asked Bob.

Bob, still looking up at the black shell that seemed to have swallowed the block, shrugged. "It could be a coupla different things. Let me check," And just like that he teleported out, so suddenly that Ammy actually stumbled. But she'd just gotten her balance back when he popped right back into place, running his hands through his hair. "Well, fuck me sideways." He walked over behind the bar, and started pouring himself a drink. Uh oh.

Ergold raised his head from the bar, and asked, "What happened?"

Bob gulped down a straight glass of vodka, then exhaled in a manner a person might if they had just swallowed straight paint thinner. "We're totally, totally fucked. He's done a dimensional inversion on us."

Ergold's eyes, which already seemed a bit bulgy, bulged out even further. "Who the fuck has that kind of power?"

"A warlock and his demon lord sponsor."

"A dimensional inversion?" Logan asked.

Ergold slapped his toupee back on his head, and said, "He turned a dimensional bubble inside out. Basically, we're trapped in the cosmic equivalent of a fishbowl."

"How much of the city are we talking about?" Logan asked Bob. He wished he was surprised, but he'd been around Bob so long he was now jaded by the impossible.

"As far as I can tell? Looks like all of downtown L.A., from Sunset on." He then fixed Ergold with a speculative look, and gestured at his haphazard toupee. "Can I get you some duct tape for that, mate?"

Ergold's eyes narrowed to deadly little slits. "That's not funny."

"What's the purpose of this? To give Angel nowhere else to go?" Logan continued, actually fairly sure Bob's duct tape comment was funny.

Bob nodded, pouring himself another vodka. "And also to make sure he can't call in help, although Reignet's too late there. Also, it's permanent night out there, so Angel can face him at any time. My guess is he wants to kill him as slowly as possible, and daylight would be too fast."

"Terrific." Logan grabbed the bottle out of Bob's hand, and took a swig before continuing. Hey, it was cranberry vodka. "Can you undo it? The dimensional inversion?"

"By myself? No. But as soon as I call the Powers and point it out, they can put things back to normal. Of course, that'll happen if the demon lord behind this pulls out of the bargain anyways."

"So this isn't a problem we need to solve?"

"Nope. Nice for a change, isn't it?"

Actually it was. "So we don't have to worry that there's creatures in this dimension who'll start snacking on civilians?"

It was Ammy who snorted derisively. "The ones already here'll start snackin' on them."

Bob grimaced. "She's right. The demons here might think it's an apocalypse underway, and in that case, all bets are off."

"Son of a bitch. So this whole big display is just to draw Angel out?"

Bob nodded. "Oh yeah. Apparently he's so confident he'll wipe the asphalt with him that he's trying to provoke a fight. He's a cocky bastard, ain't he?"

"Where is that undead asshat?" Ammy asked.

Bob waved a finger at her in a "naughty naughty" manner, which Logan already knew wouldn't work. It wouldn't work on Bob either, would it? "He's at my place. He may not even know the world's changed shape since he went to bed."

"Let's go get him then!" Ammy insisted.

"First things first," Bob told her patiently. "We need a battle plan. We may not know where Reignet is, but we know how to draw him out."

Logan knew exactly what he meant. "Angel."

"Right. So let's get the band together and work out a set list."

Ergold looked deeply confused. "You have a band?"

For a demon with a long association with Bob, he really didn't know him that well at all, did he?

Logan pulled out his cell phone, surprised to see that it still worked ("You're with me," Bob said, as if that explained his mysterious ability to get reception. It probably did), and called Giles first. The Englishman knew something bad had happened, but not what precisely; when Logan told him it was a dimensional inversion, his reply was a simple, low key, "Oh." Again, it was a stereotype that the British were stoic stiff upper lip types, but you had to absolutely love the ones that embraced it whole heartedly.

He decided to come to the Way Station and join them, which didn't seem like a good idea since the demons were probably having a free for all out there, but Giles said he wouldn't be walking the streets, as he'd invited a friend over prior to the inversion. Logan had no idea who he meant until Giles suddenly teleported into the bar, with a white haired girl on his arm.

Scratch that - woman. She just looked young. "Oh wow," Willow said, looking straight at Ergold. "Is that an Etruzian brain parasite?"

It took the demon a minute to realize she was staring at his toupee, and scowled evilly at her when he finally made the connection. "You're no one to talk about hair, missy."

She raised an eyebrow at that. "Missy?"

"I thought we could use some magical assistance," Giles interrupted, aiming the comment straight at Logan and Bob. "When you're fighting a warlock, you can never have too much magic on your side."

Bob nodded. "Good thought, mate. Nice to have you back on board, Willow."

"Thanks. You look great. I love what you've done with your hair," she told him. Unlike Ammy, Willow looked relatively normal, wearing blue jeans and a slightly gauzy long sleeved blouse with a bright multicolored paisley pattern. The only truly unusual thing was a rather large amulet on her neck, gold and filigreed, with a main pendant that looked like a lion's head holding a ruby in its mouth. Her blue eyes scudded over to Logan, and she chirped, "Scary claw guy! Hi."

He realized nearly everyone thought of him as the "scary claw guy", but still, it wasn't always welcome to hear. "The name's Logan."

She made a face at her own faux pas. "Okay, yeah, I knew it was something Irish, I just forgot what. Sorry."

"Is that the Talisman of Aulm?" Ammy asked, taking a closer look at Willow's ornate necklace.

"Amaranth, this is Willow," Bob said, making the introductions. "Will, this is Ammy."

"Willow?" Ammy repeated curiously. "Rosenberg?"

"Amaranth?" Willow repeated. "Oberon?"

They both looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.

Giles had the decency to look as puzzled as the rest of them felt. "You two know of each other?"

"Oh sure," Willow confirmed. "We both took part in the online spellcasting competition last year. Ammy was the Australian champion."

"And Will was the Irish one," Ammy confirmed. "Which is funny, 'cause you're clearly American."

"Yeah, but I've been living there for a while, so I guess they figured it was okay. Hey, you look fabulous! I love your outfit."

Even Ammy looked surprised by that comment. "Umm, thanks. So is that the talisman?"

"Oh, yeah. You'd never believe where I found it. I went to an estate auction with my girlfriend, 'cause she collects all these antique swords and stuff, and there was the talisman, lumped in with some costume jewelry."

"You're kidding me."

"No! It was insane. I bought the whole lot for like twenty dollars."

While both the girls marveled over the bargain of such a gaudy necklace, Logan asked Bob, "Does that thing do anything?"

"Oh yeah. It's a shield."

"What?"

"A shield. It protects the wearer from harmful magic and bladed weapons."

He waited a beat to see if Bob was joking, but when it was clear he wasn't, he went on. "Seriously?"

"I ain't shittin' yah, mate. Once activated, that thing is like a mystical bodyguard. And Will activated it; it's giving off a golden shimmer."

Logan looked for it, but didn't see it. He assumed that was just another Bob thing, an ability to see energies that went beyond the Human realm. "So I couldn't even claw her? Not that I want to."

"No, I don't think you could, not unless I gave you some of my powers back." He paused briefly. "But I suppose you could punch her."

What odd conversations they had.

They sat down to discuss their options. In spite of the great deal of witch firepower that Ammy, Willow, and Giles seemed to indicate, the basic problem was still the same: Reignet was immortal, and as long as his demon lord was powering him up, all they could do was weigh him down with temporary setbacks. It was up to Bob to figure out who was the demon lord, and either get him to break the contract or just kill him, as death had a tendency to break contracts. But Bob really didn't think it would come to that - if the demon lord thought he was in genuine peril, he'd just cut the Human loose. After all, Humans were a dime a dozen (after which he added "no offense", but by then it was too late).

Angel was the key to drawing Reignet out, but Bob was convinced that once he got his hands on Angel, he could take them both to another dimension and screw them out of helping him. But Bob needed Reignet to grab Angel, as that was pretty much the only way he could trace the power transfer going on between Reignet and his source.

"So let him get grabbed," Ammy insisted. "Will and I can think up something to get him back."

Logan shook his head. "What if you can't? We just sacrificed Angel. I don't like it."

Ammy gave him a look that could have stripped the spine from a small mammal. ""What do you suggest then?"

His immediate answer made them all look at him funny. "And how does that work?" Ammy replied.

Logan was forced to shrug - it was his gut response; he never claimed it was logical.

But Bob rapped his knuckles on the bar, and when they looked at him, he was smiling slyly, his eyes sparkling with mischief. "It can be done," he said, and laid it out for them. "It won't last long, but it doesn't have to last long."

Willow gasped, clearly getting this. "Just long enough to trace the demon lord! We can put a rebound spell on him - it'll slingshot him back after a couple of minutes."

"As long as Reignet doesn't get wise and intervene," Ammy countered.

"If what I read about Reignet is true, if he discovers what we've done he'll be absolutely furious," Giles interjected. "He'll want to come back here and turn the city upside down. He won't care if he comes back here or not."

Willow looked at Bob imploringly. "Do you think you can take care of the demon lord before that?"

And there was the flaw in the plan. Bob's lip twisted ruefully as he admitted, "I don't know. Time runs differently in various dimensions, and I have no idea if I'll be in an average one, a fast one, or a slow one. It's possible it'll be all over by the time Reignet reappears. It's also possible it could be hours."

"Shit," Ammy cursed. "And it almost seemed like a good idea."

"My dear, it's the only idea we've had," Giles noted wryly, sipping the tea that Bob had miraculously scared up for him. After a moment, he added, "Don't count it out yet. We'll simply prepare for war."

Ergold, who had been silent all this time, finally piped up. "You're a Watcher, aren't cha?" Giles simply nodded, and the lizard made a noise that could have been a scoff or possibly a sneeze. "I shoulda known. You guys are always getting ready for war." He then fixed his gold eyes on Logan. "What the fuck's your excuse?"

Logan held his gaze levelly. "I'm an ex-assassin. If I can't kill it, I'll die trying."

Ergold blanched a slightly paler shade of green and turned back to his beer. Logan was pretty sure he was done contributing for the afternoon. Good.

Bob caught his gaze, and asked, with genuine concern, "Are you sure about this, mate?"

Logan nodded. "And Angel would agree with me if he was here. If he has a problem with it, tell him he can take a free punch at me later."

"If we're alive."

"Yeah, well, that's always a risk."

"And I'll never get why you like that bloodsucker so much," Ammy snapped impatiently. She didn't seem to like this idea, but she never liked much, so that didn't matter.

"Like really doesn't come into it," Logan told her. "I'm the only one who can do this and probably live to tell about it." He noticed Willow smiling at him in a slightly goofy way. "What?"

"I was just thinking you'd have been neat - scary, but neat - to have in the Scooby Gang. Although I'd probably have spent a lot more time washing blood out of my clothes."

"There also may have been a slight problem with armed government thugs," Giles noted.

Willow waved that away. "Oh, been there, done that, been really disappointed by them. You'd think government thugs would have had a bit more fight in them."

"They don't handle magic well," Logan pointed out, exchanging a knowing look with Giles. He went a bit magically nuclear on the Organization recently, hadn't he? A bit of guilt flashed behind his eyes before he glanced down at his cup of tea.

The funny thing was, if Logan was right, the only one of them in this room who had never really flirted with the dark side was Amaranth. Irony didn't get much thicker than that.

* * *

They didn't know how long it would take for Reignet to respond to Angel's appearance. They had hunkered down for a long wait, but probably because they were expecting a long wait, they were disappointed. Bob loved how it always worked that way. 

He didn't want to expose himself to Reignet or his lord, as his lord might be aware of his energy, so Bob basically just did something that Humans might call "astral projection", but wasn't really. He was just opening his consciousness up, encompassing the city one block at a time. In theory, he could open it up until he took in the entire world, but Bob already knew that level of awareness would drive him instantly, totally insane. Okay, _insaner_. In any event, he didn't think it would be a good thing.

Even in this form, he could barely sense the magicks surrounding Angel as he hacked and slashed his way down the sidewalk, which had become the demon equivalent of a looter's paradise. They were tearing their way through doors and smashing windows, going after people who had hidden inside buildings, but Angel had armed himself with two swords and was cutting his way through them like a threshing machine. He'd cut off one demon's head with his right hand, while at the same time running another through on the left. In fact, as the crowd of demons converged to stop him, the quicker and more deadlier he became. It was almost like an oddly eerie yet beautiful dance. He was constantly moving, blades twirling as he turned, blood splattering the asphalt in colorful patterns as limbs flew and bodies fell, and Bob got a real sense of his sword fighting training there. It wasn't all training, though; it had gone beyond that to the level of talent, of art. This was a man who knew his weapon was nothing more than an extension of himself. He was the weapon, no matter what he had in his hands. It was almost awe inspiring - it was death dealing as art, and Angel's face remained frightening blank. He was all movement, thought, and action. It was Zen fighting, with no awareness of self, only of place.

Despite the feeding frenzy, some of the demons on the outer edge of the mob realized that despite being outnumber roughly fifteen to one, Angel was in spectacularly lethal form, and fled the scene. Angel probably would have gone after them to finish the fight, but he never got the chance.

Bob sensed the energy shift, the sudden thinness in the dimensional wall before a light appeared out of nowhere, piercing the veil of permanent night. Angel had actually looked up about a millisecond before the pinhole light appeared, but it was probably too quick for Reignet to notice.

As it was, he was extra careful, as if aware this might be a trap. The light flared and then faded, but as it did, the sound of the swords hitting the pavement was audible, its owner gone in the blink of an eye.

"Holy shit," Bob heard distantly. It was Ammy, still in the bar with the others, watching through a special scrying mirror. "He actually took him!"

Bob wanted to say he told them so, but he had no time. He found a thread of energy left in Reignet's wake, and he quickly followed it, body and mind.


	7. Chapter 7

7

He came to on a rack. A genuine medieval rack, where he was stretched out horizontally, his wrists chained over his head and his ankles shackled to the bottom of the rack. For some reason, it struck him as really funny, and he tried hard not to laugh. He tested the chains, but they were heavy iron and probably could hold a battleship in place. Nice. He was also stripped to the waist, which was pretty much a given in a situation like this.

He couldn't make out any of the details of the room - it was totally cloaked in shadow, in a way that was physically impossible since he could see in about a six foot radius around the rack. He assumed it was a dungeon, but so cheesy that even Reignet couldn't fully commit to it. "I hope you don't think having a soul is going to save you," he said, his voice like a creaking door.

"Heaven forbid. Don't let sense clutter up a good revenge scenario."

He appeared like a wraith beside the rack. To say he looked gaunt was actually an understatement - he looked skeletal, like a mummy that had been haphazardly reanimated. His skin was leathery and looked unnaturally tight over his bones, and he was as thin as a skeleton hanging in an anatomy class. He had a cloud of white hair and eyes as blue-white as Arctic ice and just as cold. With his starvation narrow face and sharp features, his face looked like a blade that could be slipped between your ribs. He wore a black overcoat about a hundred years out of date over a white shirt almost two hundred years out of date, and black pants that looked fairly recent. Altogether, he looked like a spooky undertaker.

Reignet produced a little silver knife, a stiletto with a jeweled handle shaped like a cross, and he let the point rest in the center of his chest. "Still insolent, I see." He pressed down on the knife, breaking his skin. "Do you know why I brought you here, Angelus? Because I want to kill you in pieces."

"Why the Kalivrana then?"

He shrugged a single bony shoulder. It was like watching bones shift in a sack. "He was only meant to flush you out. When he failed to do so immediately, I moved on to plan B."

"He know about that? He might be pissed."

Reignet started to drag the knife up his breastbone, towards his throat, moving as slowly as possible. "I care not what that creature thinks of me. He may prey on your corrupt kind, but he is no better."

"Corrupt? A black magic slingin' warlock calls me corrupt?" He scoffed. "Yeah, whatever Sauron."

A troubled look passed over Reignet's face as he touched his fingertips to his bare chest. "Why is your skin warm?"

As if on cue, the knife slice in his chest healed up as neatly as if time had just reversed itself, and Reignet's icy cold gaze snapped onto his face like lasers. "You're not Angelus."

"Course I am. Who else would I be? Tom Cruise?"

He withdrew the knife and held his hand flat two feet over his chest, as if pressing on some invisible armor. Logan could actually feel when Reignet used his power to find the false layer of appearance that Bob had managed to cloak him in. It wasn't a simple one but a pretty complex, multi-layered one that Bob was pretty sure would fool someone not looking for it. Of course the second he knew to look for it this whole thing was done, but Logan figured he'd lasted longer than he thought. He was too flippant for Angel anyways. Angelus no, but that was probably who Reignet was expecting anyways.

"Who is powerful enough to do this?" Reignet asked, seemingly both shocked and completely pissed off at the same time.

"You think you're the king warlock? Bub, this is Los Angeles - there's about a thousand other guys waiting in the wings to replace you." He couldn't tell him it was Bob, could he? You didn't give away the god trump card this early in the game.

He twisted his wrists in the shackles in a rather painful manner, and popped his claws, which sliced through the chains like they were made of butter. They just didn't make restraints like they used to.

Although horrified, Reignet managed to shatter Bob's illusion and jump back as Logan sat up and sliced through the chains holding his ankles. "What are you?" Reignet demanded.

"What? Hey, that's uncalled for, Frenchie." He jumped off the rack, but his feet had barely touched the cold stone floor when a violent force suddenly slammed him back into the stone walls at what would have been bone shattering force had he had bones you could actually shatter. But since he didn't, all he felt was the pressure, and taste a bit of blood in the back of his throat as some of his organs pulped.

"What trick is this?" Reignet growled, his eyes glowing a faint, somewhat troubling red. "Where is Angel?"

Logan grinned at him, although it was a kind of a snarl. Either would do. "Not here."

The pressure increased as Reignet twisted his hand. It didn't matter that he was twelve feet away - it was like he was reaching into his chest and twisting his kidneys with his bare hand. Logan felt blood bubble out his mouth and sluice down his chin, but he was still fighting the urge to laugh. Was this the best he had? Really? The Organization could teach him a thing or two about torture. "What the fuck are you? And why aren't you screaming?"

He grinned at him, showing bloody teeth, wanting only to see the doubt in his eyes. Fear would be a bonus. "I'm Weapon X, motherfucker. And I don't scream - I make other people scream."

The pain exploded through Logan's midsection, a bright, hot supernova that ended in darkness and oblivion.

For several seconds. Perhaps a minute.

He didn't realize any of this until he came to on the floor, his face swimming in a puddle of blood that must have come from him, although he had little knowledge of it. So what had Reignet done to him? Aneurysm? Stroke? Stopped his heart? Not that it mattered, he just kind of wanted to know for future reference. "That all you got?" he muttered, shoving himself up to his knees.

Reignet wheeled around to look at him, the horror naked on his sepulchral face. "What foul creature are you?! I made your heart explode!"

Was that it? He had to give him props for an excessively gory move there. A snippet of a song, courtesy of Bob, floated through his mind, and almost made him laugh again: _"She left me for dead, but death didn't want no sloppy seconds."_

"What am I? I'm an avatar, Reignet, and you're pissing off a god. Wanna know what happens when he gets tired of the game?"

His eyes widened in horror. "You can't be a -" But he fell silent, as he must have assumed that was the only way he could keep healing from these injuries. "Why are you here?"

That was the only question he really wanted answered now, as it was the only one he could use. "Angel has powerful friends. This is the only warning you're gonna get. Leave now, and go back into hiding. Otherwise, you're a dead man."

Now when you were on a god's shit list that was really the only smart thing to do, although a god could hunt you down wherever you went if they really wanted to. But Reignet was arrogant and probably only living for revenge at this point - nothing else mattered at all. He had abandoned his sense and sanity long ago, if he ever really had any at all. "Angel's not the only one with powerful friends," he growled, his eyes flaring red.

There was no transition at all. One second they were in this dungeon pocket universe, and in the next Logan found himself on the street back in L.A., just down from the Way Station, kneeling in the demon corpses he had left behind. The funny thing was, that was almost kind of fun. Also, scary, as just blanking out his mind and fighting an overwhelming horde ... felt almost familiar. It was like he'd done it before, even though he couldn't place a specific memory. Oh sure, he'd fought demons in big groups before, but it wasn't like that. It was ... he wasn't sure. It just pointed to more gaps in his memory and something he really didn't want to know about himself. The blood stained swords were still here, but Logan made no move to pick them up.

"Come out, you coward!" Reignet roared. He was standing in the middle of the empty street, screaming up at the solid black sky. "Stop hiding!"

"Now that hurts," Angel said, sauntering out of a shadowy doorway.

Reignet made a gesture with his hand and red-orange energy shot out at Angel with the speed of a lightning bolt. But he raised his own hand and a blue-white shield seemed to flare to life, dissipating the energy like it was nothing.

"Oh, come on," Angel chided, his voice and his appearance slowly bleeding into Willow, who was the Angel decoy this time. "Is that all you got? I heard you were a big bad warlock."

Ammy appeared across the street, behind Reignet, and threw a spell that looked like a ball of white energy. It slammed into his back like a boulder and sent him sprawling face down on the asphalt.

"You okay Logan?" Bren asked, coming up behind him. Giles had contacted a couple of the others, as you could never have enough fighters. Especially one in particular.

He nodded, spitting out some old blood before he stood up. "Same old shit. They're always disappointed when the torture doesn't stick."

Reignet jumped back to his feet with an angry snarl, shouting out a spell that caused bile green energy to erupt from his hands and slam into the doorway where Willow had been just a second before. It splintered wood and reduced the jamb to shrapnel, but she was now standing on the edge of the roof, looking down at him. Ammy had also moved, but Logan couldn't see her from this vantage point. "Yoo hoo," Willow called. "Up here. God you're slow. Is it past your bedtime, old man?"

He raised his hands up towards the sky and shouted something unintelligible, making Bren step in front of Logan and raise his mirror shield like he could repel something with it. (Could he? He thought it was just glass.) He was wearing it on his arm like a centurion - all Bren needed was a sword to complete the effect. Then again, he didn't know of any centurions wearing jeans and a Kids In The Hall t-shirt.

Energy poured from Reignet, a red cascade that made the black sky swirl with magic, and Logan saw that the few demons on the street, attracted seemingly by the dead bodies, froze in place. Logan made sure he could still move, in spite of the sense of thickened air around him, and asked, "Kid, how'd you do that?"

Bren just looked startled, and seemed afraid to lower the shield. "I have no fucking idea."

They weren't the only ones still moving. Willow was shaking her head. "A time freeze? I'd have gone with a repel spell myself. Kind of like this." She said some unintelligible words, echoed by Ammy - who was now on the roof of a building on the other side of the street - and they both cast a spell that shined over the street like a star for one brief second, then collapsed in on itself. The air was no longer thick and the demons were moving again, although they looked so freaked out many of them took off running.

Reignet let out a growl of frustration and lashed out with spells that swirled around the street like a tornado, but both Ammy and Willow were already gone. This was the hit and run battle technique deemed to be most effective - it would piss him off, and getting angry would get him sloppy.

"Why are you protecting him?!" Reignet demanded, trying to look everywhere up and down the street at once. "He's a killer!"

Logan motioned for their secret weapon to come out of hiding, and she shot him a nervous glance. He just pointed at Reignet and mouthed, _"It's okay. Go."_

The basic problem in physically engaging a warlock in a fight, especially one as powerful as Reignet, was he could kill you with a spell. Logan knew he could lop body parts off, but Reignet could kill him, and he'd need a minute or two to recover, and there'd no longer be any element of surprise in his attacks since Reignet would know what to expect. What they needed was someone who he'd have no idea how to fight, as impervious to permanent damage as he was. That was not really as hard a thing to find as they originally thought.

Willow had thrown a cloaking spell on her so Reignet wouldn't see her crossing the street, although he seemed to sense her and turned just as she reached him. But all that did was allow her to touch his face, and he made a strange croaking noise as his eyes turned red and black veins started snaking across his face.

Logan was really unsure of this when Bob first mentioned it. Rogue taking the powers of a demon sponsored warlock? That just sounded like trouble.

But Bob assured him that Rogue wouldn't get the magical ability or the soul debt to the demon lord - those were things you learned and earned, not something you could "borrow", But what she would have was his immortality: there was no way in hell that Reignet could kill her, no matter what he threw at her. And if he got any physical enhancements out of the demon deal - strength, for example - she'd get those too. Still, it was Logan who had to talk her into it over the phone. She wasn't sure she could fight him, mainly because no one was sure if this guy was super strong or not, but Logan assured her that she'd absorbed him enough times that she knew how to fight, strength or not. Which sounded arrogant in retrospect, but he hadn't meant it that way. Fighting was just what he was good at, that's all, even when he had his mind totally scrambled, and he assumed that Rogue had at least some memory of that.

Although he was having the life ripped out of him, Reignet somehow managed to break Rogue's grip and stumble back, nearly falling on his ass. "What the hell ..?"

"Is that where you're getting your powers from?" Rogue asked. Her eyes now had a bit of a red tinge to them. "That'd explain a lot." She then punched him in the face and kicked him in the chest, finally putting him down on his ass.

"Super strength?" Bren wondered.

"I'm gonna say yes," Logan said.

Reignet countered with a spell that blew Rogue clear across the street, where she collided with a streetlight before smashing through the window of a thrift shop. The streetlight toppled like a tree in her wake.

"Holy shit," Bren exclaimed, raising his shield once more. "Are we sure she can't be hurt?"

That was the problem. He was taking Bob's word for this, and he had no real idea of how Reignet's devil's bargain worked. If Bob was lying to him, he was so gonna kick his ass.

Reignet had already turned his attention back to where he last saw Willow, but there was a noise of shifting rubble, and Rogue came climbing out of the broken shop window, rolling her head as she unkinked her neck. "I hope you have insurance," she told him. Her clothes, which were just a tight long sleeved green top and khaki pants, were torn here and there, but she looked otherwise fine. Her eyes were still glowing faintly red.

Reignet's jaw dropped like it had just become unhinged. "You should be dead. Are you like him, the other one? Who _are_ you?"

"I'm you, dumb ass," she said, picking up the broken streetlight and smashing him with it, sending him slamming back into a parked car. "What are you, a fucking moron?"

Willow showed up beside them, just winking into existence next to them. Bren jumped and almost - but not quite - yelped. "Your friend is tough. Should I be surprised?"

Logan shrugged. "She's an X-Man. No."

"She's cute too."

"She's straight," Bren told her.

Willow, still smiling, just shrugged. "Nobody's perfect." She then disappeared, reappearing down the street as she and Ammy double teamed Reignet with another spell after he'd walloped Rogue again. Not that it did any good - she was already back on her feet, and after they hit him with the spells, Rogue kicked the warlock in the groin.

After wincing - Logan almost felt bad for this luckless son of a bitch - he asked Bren, "So where's the boyfriend?"

"When we were leaving the apartment, we saw a bunch of vampires besieging another complex. Kier told me to go on ahead and he'd take care of them and catch up with me as soon as he could." Logan nodded, and Bren paused briefly. "You know, I'm beginning to think all you Canadian boys live to be noble."

"Naw, we just don't know any better. Exposure to moose poop makes you loopy."

Bren actually tittered, which was unusual in a semi-apocalyptic scenario like this, but come to think of it, not really. They'd all been involved in so damn many you pretty much had to laugh at all of them.

Logan decided to use his one good trick now. Giles had emerged from beneath the protective glamour of the Way Station to lob a Molotov cocktail right at Reignet (he'd considered a fire spell, but decided he'd be more surprised by a physical attack), and as Reignet turned with an angry roar to face him, back still on fire, Giles disappeared back beneath the glamour, and Rogue clocked the warlock with a bumper she ripped off the parked car. (That poor bastard who owned that Honda - Logan hoped he had insurance.) As Reignet's fire pretty much burned out, he threw another pointless spell on Rogue that sent her teleporting away. He was so busy doing that that he didn't hear Logan running up to him, but he heard the noise as he popped his claws and turned, eyes blazing red, just in time for Logan to take his neck out with a single wide slash. Reignet's head flew across the street and rolled into the gutter, his body falling to its knees, as Ammy blinked into existence with Rogue. "Bastard teleported me to Memphis," Rogue said sourly.

"Tennessee or Egypt?" Logan wondered.

"There's a Memphis in Egypt?" Rogue asked. He hoped that was a joke.

As they stood there watching, Reignet's head in the gutter winked out of existence, and reappeared reattached to his neck.

"We are so fucked," Ammy cursed.

Where the hell was Bob? They could only annoy this guy for so long, and then he was going to go postal on the entire city.

Could a warlock go postal? Damn it, that was gonna bug him for the rest of the day - or the rest of his life, whichever came first.

* * *

Bob had no idea where the energy thread would take him. He had prepared himself for many hellish landscapes, from the traditional fire and lava to the stark ice and snow, to the more esoteric hells, such as the ones that were nothing but moving darkness, or an endless sea full of mysterious but unseen creatures. To be honest, he was kind of hoping he'd end up in a more abstract one, such as the one that was nothing but endless rooms in a hospital, or the one where the ground beneath your feet was actually semi-soft cheese and you were hunted by giant anthropomorphic spoons, but no, no such luck.

He materialized in a bland office, with white walls, beige carpets, and florescent lighting, and a rather vast honeycomb of cubicles filled with Ikea style desks and chairs. It was clean and inoffensive and overwhelmingly hellish and depressing. It was also very familiar.

Shit. Here he was, all geared up for a fight with a big bad god, and it turns out his enemy is a friend. This was exactly the type of irony he hated.


	8. Chapter 8

8

Bob rubbed his eyes, feeling them burn with toner exposure, and shouted, "Bal! We need to talk, now!" He threaded his way through the cubicles until Balor appeared near a glassed in office, holding a big pile of files with color coordinated tabs.

"Bob!" Balor the Celtic god of death exclaimed, sounding happy to see him. He wore a brown pin striped suit (eww), a white shirt and red tie, none of which coordinated with the silver duct tape holding his huge eye shut. Most of Balor's slightly oversized face was taken up by that one big pumpkin sized eye, so his mouth and nose, squinched in at the bottom near his chin, looked both like afterthoughts and architectural mishaps. His eye was duct taped down because everything he looked at he killed - it wasn't his fault, it was just what happened when you had a "death eye". The Gorgons could surely sympathize. "Great to see … uh, hear you. What brings you here?"

"You're powering a warlock."

"Am I?" He dumped the files on a nearby desk and scratched his head. "Well, it's possible. I have a lot of contractors. I'm afraid I don't keep track of them all."

"Jean-Claude Reignet?"

He shook his head. "All Human names sound the same to me."

Bob sighed, and wished this was easier. Admittedly he couldn't kill a death god - death gods would just come back, as death didn't exactly take its own agents; immunity to death was part of the package deal - but since Balor's only defense was his death eye, he'd be easy to take. But this had all the earmarks of misunderstanding, not genuine malice. "This warlock has dimension inverted Los Angeles."

"What?" He sounded genuinely shocked. "Well, that's not good."

"He's also trying to kill an agent of the Powers. Now they don't know that yet, but when they do …"

Bob didn't need to finish that sentence - no one really wanted to piss off the Powers That Be, not even the other gods who hated them. As far as Bob knew, Balor was generally indifferent to the Powers in the way that most death gods were. What was there to worry about? To genuinely kill him would be so hard it was hardly worth anyone's effort, and he rarely crossed paths with anyone other than other death gods. "Fuck damn shit," Balor cursed colorfully, taking a seat by the nearest computer. Even though he technically couldn't see, it didn't seem to hamper his typing skills. "Can you spell this clown's name for me?"

He did, then asked, "Can you void the contract?"

He snorted. "I'm Balor - I can void any damn contract I want. But you are gonna have to fill out some paperwork for my records."

Bob groaned, rolling his eyes. "Can't we just chalk this up as a favor between friends?"

Balor scowled evilly, which was pretty frightening. "Paperwork is the soul of order, Bob. We've discussed this."

No, it was more like Balor harangued him with it, but okay - if he chose bureaucracy over death, who was he to quibble? Still, death probably would have been preferable.

* * *

Beheading Reignet barely kept him down for fifteen seconds.

Bren shouted at him to join him while Willow and Ammy hit the warlock with a spell so bright Logan could feel his retinas burning away. In fact, the afterimages were burned into his eyes so brightly he couldn't see, but he already knew where Bren was, so it didn't really matter. The kid met him part way, grabbing his arm and swinging him behind him, presumably raising his shield to protect them from the aftermath, whatever the hell that was going to be. It made him wonder if Rags ever knew about the protective effects of the shield, or if that was something special he rigged up for the kid.

His vision came back pretty quickly, although it felt slow to him. In the meantime he heard the exchange of spells, mostly in languages he'd never heard before, and it ended up sounding nastier than it appeared. The first thing he saw, his vision clearing, was Rogue smashing Reignet on the head with a car door. (The car itself was now gone. Presumably to a much better place.) He wasn't completely out of it yet, though, as he picked up part of the broken streetlight and hit her, sending her sprawling to the street. Logan felt a sudden urge to attack the fuck, but he had to hold back, 'cause right now Rogue was more indestructible than he was.

"Down in front!" A familiar voice said behind him, and he instinctively grabbed Bren and ducked, just in time for a double headed axe to go spinning over their heads. It landed with a decisive wet thunk in the back of Reignet's head, cleaving it neatly in two. He staggered and dropped to his knees, but it looked like the seam of it was healing already.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Logan hissed, turning to face Angel. "We haven't got this guy under control yet. If he sees you, he'll kill you."

Angel shrugged. "Better me than the whole city."

Willow popped into existence right next to them. "Angel! What -"

"I've already asked," Logan interrupted. "He's being noble again."

"Oh bugger," she said, scowling. "Must you do that _now_?"

Angel looked between them in mild disbelief. He probably wasn't used to friends from his old life and his new one ganging up on him. "He's cut the city into pieces. The demons are having a field day hunting down the people …" Angel trailed off, and his eyes scudded over to Bren. "Oh, Kier wanted me to tell you he's okay, he just has to get a couple of stragglers and then he'll be here."

Bren let out a small exhale in relief. "Good. He's really okay?"

Angel snorted. "He's the Ascendant, remember? The male Slayer prototype. From what I saw, the other vampires weren't having much luck against him. Then again, for a vampire motorcycle gang, they really hadn't gotten the fighting as one unit thing down."

Willow said something quite rapidly and waved her hand at Angel, immediately changing his appearance, cloaking him in a glamour. "That'll hold for now," she warned him, "but don't get too close. If he senses it, I don't know if we'll be able to -" Her head snapped around, back towards Reignet, who was casting a spell in a rather dolorous tone. "Holy shit, that's a death spell."

"What?" Logan asked. They all looked to Reignet, who, by hand motion, seemed to be aiming it at Rogue. The air between them seem to shimmer, and a beer can in the gutter behind Rogue actually crumpled up of its own accord and quickly rusted into nothing but a smudge.

But Rogue herself just shook her head and looked at the warlock with her pale red eyes. "That almost tickled."

"Kick his ass, darlin'!" Logan shouted supportively.

"She took his power?" Angel asked.

It was Willow that answered. "Physically, yeah. A death spell won't work on him, apparently. Good to know. Now stay out of trouble." She then popped out of existence again.

"So who do I look like?" Angel asked, looking at his hands and either not seeing what they were seeing, or unsure of how to take it.

Logan really tried hard not to laugh. Willow had somehow made Angel look like a petite blonde girl in blue pants and a white cashmere sweater. In fact, didn't she look familiar? Yeah - she was with Giles at Wesley's funeral. What was her name again? Something kind of stupid; all he really remembered was she was supposed to be the Slayer.

"I honestly have no idea," Bren said, and he seemed honest. But from the way he grimaced, he was also trying not to laugh.

Angel a/k/a tiny blonde girl, looked at them suspiciously. "She made me a woman, didn't she?"

That made Bren laugh, and he turned away so he didn't laugh directly in his boss's face. The way Angel/girl frowned at him made Logan snicker and turn away so he didn't lose it completely.

After knocking Rogue flying through a brick wall and sustaining another pyrotechnic assault from Willow and Ammy, Reignet finally got fed up. He began intoning a spell that actually hurt Logan's ears, and he had no idea why. It was like the spell itself was made of sharp words, ones with edges and points, things that cut simply with sound. He wasn't the only one cringing; Angel-ette was too, and so was Bren, who still managed to keep his shield up and was now muttering, "Holy Sisters, protect your humble servant …"

What looked like some kind of semi-transparent bubble started forming around Reignet, a coruscating membrane of energy that started to take on a slightly greenish cast. "What the fuck is that?" Logan asked, the pain in his ears subsiding and the sound becoming muffled. He wasn't sure if Bren's plea had actually done something or if his eardrums had popped and just started healing again.

"I think he's sealing himself in a reality bubble," Angel said. "I've heard about that spell, but I've never seen it done. It takes way too much energy."

"What does that mean?" Logan asked, not looking forward to the answer.

Angel sighed as if punched in the stomach. "It means it'll take a while for any magic to reach him, until Willow and Amaranth can break the bubble. That might take a while."

"Rogue ..?"

Angel shook his head, making his blonde hair resettle itself around his shoulders. "Useless. She won't be able to touch him either."

"But he can still hurt us?"

"Hell yeah."

Willow and Ammy were hitting him with spells that looked like flamethrowers, green and orange energy like fire spilling over the dome covering Reignet, but it didn't seem to be hurting him or reaching him. But he said something and energy suddenly surged around him like an explosive shockwave, throwing Rogue, Ammy, and Willow down to the street. It came towards them, and Logan instinctively braced for impact …

… and it missed. No, it didn't miss, it just bypassed them completely. That seemed to get Reignet's attention.

"The Gorgons," Angel muttered, filling him in. "Gods exist outside time and reality. A reality or time spell won't effect them."

_Or theirs, _Logan figured he wanted to say, but didn't. That was implicit.

"Who do you work for, boy?" Reignet demanded.

"I am with the Gorgons," Bren shouted back, doing an excellent job of hiding the fear in his voice (but Logan could still smell it). "Attack me and you attack them!"

Reignet glared at him with his dead but glowing crimson eyes, and maybe he noticed that Bren's eyes were naturally red. He must have decided that the kid was telling the truth - and the guy and the little blonde girl behind him were irrelevant - as he turned away with an angry roar, throwing his hands up in the air. Suddenly the street started wavering like the asphalt was water, waves of pavement moving like breakers towards the shore, and while everything still standing on the street was thrown down in the turbulent motion, the buildings starting to crumble, they remained fairly stable and okay. "He bending reality again?" Logan guessed.

Angel nodded. "And as long as we're behind Brendan, we're unaffected."

"Super. Kid, think you can stand here forever?"

Bren let out a breathless little laugh. "As long as I don't pass out from fright or have a psychedelic freak out, sure." Sweat was starting to trickle down the side of his face, like just holding that light shield was a tremendous effort, but Logan knew that wasn't it.

Cracks started to show in the glamour around the Way Station - it was shifting from a condemned building to a strangely classy looking bar and back again - and Reignet noticed, as he started focusing his energy on tearing it down. The glamour was stripped away layer by layer, and even though Ammy and Willow had gone back to attacking him with magic, he remained oblivious to it. They had a long way to go before bursting that reality bubble, while the reality around them kept roiling even more violently. It was like the worst possible earthquake that California could ever have, which was saying something.

"I need to stop this," Angel insisted, taking a step forward.

Logan grabbed his arm, and said, "Take another step and you'll get a claw in the gut. Give Bob some more time."

Angel didn't bother to hide his evil look, but it seemed almost hilarious coming from the little blonde girl. "It could take hours, Logan. The city doesn't have that much time."

Sadly, that was a good point. He was starting to feel vaguely seasick watching reality surge up and down, the cityscape twisting around them like it was trying to break free. Oh, what he wouldn't have given for a nice, straightforward mutant fight. Sure, maybe someone was throwing lightning bolts or cars at you, but at least you knew where you stood, and you didn't have to worry about somebody ripping a whole city apart just to be a fucking brat.

Angel leaned forward, and shouted to Bren, "Can the Gorgons do anything here?"

Bren gave him a sidelong glance. "Like what?"

"This is your home - he's tearing it up. Wouldn't protecting you include protecting it?"

Bren thought about that a moment, cocking his head to the side like a parakeet. After a moment, he said, "I guess it's worth a shot." He then began shouting some kind of plea to the sky, which was hardly audible over the breaking of reality and the city.

Reignet broke down the glamour over the bar, which was surprising for a couple of reasons, but mostly because the Way Station actually looked _nice_. Inside it was all dive bar, and the outer façade was a condemned building. But the real outside of the bar, never before seen, was classy looking dark brick, and smoked glass windows that weren't actually seen inside the bar. Was this a second glamour?

There was a new noise, a sound like ice breaking, and there were strange dapples of light stabbing through the gloom. They all looked up, and it seemed the black sky was cracking, veins of light spider webbing through the blackness, and even Reignet was looking up in confusion.

"Is that supposed to be happening?" Bren asked. "Is he doing this, or are the Gorgons? Is it Bob?"

Logan and Angel exchanged quizzical glances, and they were both forced to shrug. "I have no idea," Angel admitted.

But Logan figured they were about to find out, one way or another.


	9. Chapter 9

9

It occurred to Angel that maybe he should get into some shade, since no one was sure if sunlight was going to come streaming if the black shell broke or not, but that would have required him navigating the very fluid, unstable reality around them outside of Bren's protective shadow, and that itself was just another can of worms. In other words, he was fucked no matter how they went about it. That'd teach him to be noble.

The reality spasms seemed to be slowing, although the cracking across the sky hadn't done much else, and Bren was getting visibly nervous. "Is this a result or not?"

Then Logan heard the song coming from the Way Station and its previously quiet jukebox, and knew it was over. "Bob did it. Reignet is powerless, he just doesn't know it yet."

"How do you know?" Bren asked.

"The song." Angel and Bren listened, and as he assumed they heard Soul Asylum's "Somebody To Shove", Logan explained, "It's one of Bob's theme songs. Be glad he didn't pick the Mr. Bungle one."

"He has a theme song?' Angel repeated. "More than one?"

Logan nodded wearily. "He has picked out a couple for me too. The one I really don't get is "Rhinosaur"."

"The Soundgarden song?" Bren asked, although there was probably only one song in the entire history of time with that name. He thought about it for a moment, grimacing in thought. "Yeah, that's a puzzler."

Ammy must have realized that, as she hit the warlock with another spell like green fire, and Willow followed suit, although the flames shooting from her hands were more red. They clashed against the sides of Reignet's reality bubble, and it seemed to flicker like it had lost power before completely dying. He looked pretty surprised by that.

"Mate, you had to attack on my street? Bad form," Bob said, appearing at the corner of the street behind Reignet. He was now wearing a t-shirt that said 'My Other Ride Is Your Mom'. Talk about bad form …

Reignet gave him an evil look, and asked, "Who the hell are you?"

"I the hell am Bob, although your kind might know me better as the Drai'shajan." Reignet went both still and shockingly pale - yes, he knew what that meant. "Oh, and I have nothing to do with that," Bob added, pointing up at the cracking black shell of the sky. "I don't have that kind of power. Kid, you call the Gorgons?"

It took Bren a moment to realize he was addressing him. "Um, yeah. Shouldn't I have?"

"No, hey, great move. You must have asked nicely. Which also means, Jean-Claude, you really don't want to be here when they finish breaking that down. Can you guess what they're gonna do to you? The Sisters don't have a broad palette, but that one thing they do, they do really well."

Reignet conjured up a spell and threw it at Bob, but Bob just waived his hand dismissively, and the spell, whatever it was, never seemed to reach him. "Oh please. Don't you get it yet? Balor decided you're not worth the trouble. You've been fired, mate. Welcome to the wonderful world of unemployment."

Reignet's eyebrows drooped severely, a lifetime's worth of creases appearing on his forehead. "That - that isn't possible."

"So he's finally at our mercy?" Willow asked evilly, giving him a savage grin that would have made a lesser man shit his pants.

"Oh good," Rogue said, cracking her knuckles.

"I don't know," Ammy said. "What do you think, grand?"

"Well, it'd be funny to leave him for the Gorgons," Bob admitted, rubbing his chin in a parody of deep thought. "I've always wanted a stone statue of a prick out in front of the bar." He looked around, and looked towards them. "Angel do you want him?"

"Angel?" Reignet repeated.

Bob had obviously seen through Willow's glamour, in a way that only he could. Willow said something and waived her hands and made it drop, so he actually looked like himself again. Reignet looked like he was going to hit him with a spell, but Bob said, "Don't even think it."

Angel shook his head. "I want nothing to do with him. I'm sorry about what happened to your family, but how many people have you killed in your lifetime, Reignet? As many as me, more? Black magic is deadly, it kills, and you brought them in to kill right along with you. What was the point?"

Reignet gave him a hateful glare that probably would have killed, had Bob allowed it. "You don't speak to me that way, monster!"

"He's an addict," Giles said, appearing outside the bar. "Black magic poisons you, and at a certain point, you become lost. You serve the magic rather than have it serve you. He's a husk, a shell of a man. He probably doesn't even know why he's hunting you anymore."

"Yes I do! He's a butcher who doesn't deserve to walk the face of the earth!"

"He's atoning," Bob said. "What have you done?" He made a show of looking around. "Trying to destroy a city? Crackin' hell, mate, that ain't no way to start."

Reignet glared at him, trembling with rage, hands balling into fists at his side. He took a step towards Bob, but Ammy raised her hands in a defensive manner, and said, "Don't you dare, dickface." She looked to Bob, and added, "I can toast 'im."

"No. You kill him with magic, and you're as bad as he is."

Logan sighed, and said, "I'll do it." What was a bit more blood on his hands? It didn't matter much anymore.

Bob held up his hand. "None of us have to do a damn thing. And you know why, don't you, Jean-Claude?"

Reignet's look still could have blistered paint, but Logan was catching a distinct scent of fear. "Were you a servant of hell, was that it?"

Bob ignored the question. Logan figured the jukebox now playing Pansy Division's "Musclehead" was all the response Reignet was going to get about that. "You cheated a lot of people out of their lives, Jean, but their burned out souls can't get revenge, can they? Some dead just don't have a voice. But you used your power to screw with a universal power, and I don't think it much likes that. You _do_ know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

Reignet looked both wary and confused, apparently not sure, but Bren quietly said, "Ooh. Can Bob do that?"

"Do what?" Logan asked.

But Angel simply snorted, and said, "He's Bob. He can do anything he wants."

Bob was staring at Reignet in such a cold way that it was almost as palpable as a cool breeze, and Reignet actually took a step back. It was the first smart thing he'd done all day, but it was too late. "You can feel it, can't you Jean? It's been looking for you for a long time, and now it's found you."

Reignet was shaking his head. "I have no idea what you're tal -" he cut his own sentence short with a pained groan, and Logan noticed Reignet's arm. At first he thought it was shrinking, but then he realized it was simply his skin growing taut, becoming thin and leathery as the muscles and tendons in his arm began to contract and atrophy, and Reignet finally looked at it, saw what was going on, and screamed.

The universal constant that Reignet had fooled was time. And now it was catching up with him.

Bob gave him an evil grin. "I hope you like filing, 'cause Balor has a lot for you to do. But you'd be surprised how fast a millennium can go. Oh, wait, I meant slow. Sorry."

He dropped to his knees as his skin continued to pull tight against his wasting frame, becoming dried and wrinkled, until he looked like an Egyptian mummy dressed in funereal clothes, his white hair turning steel grey and shedding from his scalp like he'd been bathed in radiation. Finally he fell over, his bones clattering loose from his decayed clothes, his desiccated skin turning to dust and blowing away across the asphalt.

"Did you do that?" Rogue asked.

Bob straightened up and shook his head. "Time did that. It's been waitin' for him for a long time. No pun intended." Logan noticed his t-shirt had changed from the insult to a "Flight of the Conchords" one, and the jukebox was now playing The Pretenders' "Time The Avenger". Cute.

There was a louder cracking noise, like a glacier had just broken in half down the street, and the blackness started to fall away from the sky, revealing the odd glow of a Los Angeles night, a sort of sepia toned darkness that was a night sky polluted by light and smog. Bob looked up at the sky, even though there was nothing to see, and shouted, "Thanks girls, but the dude's already dead. He pissed off a lot of people. He was a real wanker."

There was silence, and everyone, including Bren, looked around, but there was no sign of the Sisters or a response. Finally, after waiting for several seconds, Bren asked, "Are they cool with that?"

Bob shrugged. "We're not dead, so I'm gonna say yeah."

Rogue raised her eyebrows. Her eyes were still faintly red. "Was that an actual possibility?"

"A very minor one," Bob replied, measuring out a centimeter with his thumb and forefinger. "Of course, Bren was never in danger, but the rest of us … well …"

"Nice to know," Angel snapped sarcastically. He gazed down at the remains of Reignet for a moment, then kicked the pile of cloth, sending a bone that was once part of his arm rolling across the street. "I almost feel bad for him. I did something horrible to his family."

"And how many horrible things had he done to other people's families?" Giles countered. "He slaughtered entire villages to power himself. There were no heroes or victims here, Angel, just victims."

There was the distant but rapidly approaching sound of a motor, and a motorcycle careened around the corner, going a bit too fast, but then again, how was he to know there'd be people standing in the middle of the road? But Kier at least had vampire reflexes, and was able to steer the bike onto the currently empty sidewalk before bringing the bike to a halt. "Jesus people, don't you know no one walks in L.A.?"

Bren let out a sigh or relief and crossed the street to meet him. "Where the hell did you get the bike?"

"Oh, I dusted the owner, and I figured why the hell leave it? I mean, it was just gonna get stolen or towed."

"So you figured you'd steal it," Angel replied, although in a wry manner.

"It'd be a shame to let a Harley go to waste," Kier said, grinning at him. He hopped off the bike, and he and Bren embraced like they just collapsed into each other. The kid must have been worried about Kier, but why he had no idea. Yeah, Kier was a young vampire, but he still had an edge over most of the newbies.

"Aww," Rogue commented, retrieving her gloves from her pocket and pulling them back on. "You guys are so cute. It makes me depressed."

"Just broke up?" Willow guessed.

"A little while ago, but yeah. And it ain't exactly easy for me to date, since …" she held up her gloved hands, and let that fill in the blanks for her. It must have, since Willow nodded.

"Yeah, I could see where not being able to touch anyone could be a problem."

"But hey, it was a big help today," Bob pointed out, with one of his patented shit eating grins. The fact that he hadn't taken away her power yet meant he pretty much didn't want to. But that didn't mean he wouldn't if she asked, it just meant he was stalling. She scowled at him like she knew that.

Bob shifted his gaze to him. "So mate, wanna help me hunt down a Kalivrana?"

Logan sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Do I have a choice?"

"Sure ya do. I just thought you might be dyin' for some action."

He knew him too well. It was really a pisser.

* * *

He and Bob headed back for Angel's office, with Bob advising him to "keep his nose open" (ha) for a strange smell that was kind of crow like, but kind of not. That could have been more vague and unhelpful, but that would have been hard.

It did give him a chance to ask if time was looking for him. Bob assured him that time knew exactly where he was - he was aging, just very slowly. It should have been comforting, but somehow it wasn't.

Much like that strange smell. Logan picked it up within a block of Angel Investigations. Sure, it was hard to parse out amongst the various L.A. smells of smog and exhaust, but it was there - a scent of crows with a taint of something that could have been smoke, and could have been vinyl, and wasn't quite either. He looked up and saw large crows lining the roofs of buildings up and down the street, nearly blending into the darkness.

Bob had changed his scent, so he'd smell more "dead" to the Kalivrana and hopefully attract him. It didn't happen immediately, but as soon as he turned onto the main street, he saw a huge cloud of birds converging in the center of the road, eventually coalescing into a dark humanoid shape. "What are you supposed to be?" a rough voice asked. It almost sounded like a chorus of crows morphed into a voice.

Logan paused and crossed his arms over his chest. "Consider me a friend, for the moment. The guy who hired you is dead - the contract is null and void. Leave the city now, before I hafta kill you."

He made a noise that could have been a laugh, or maybe he was coughing something up - it was really hard to tell. "You'll do that, sure. Are you alive or dead? You don't smell right."

"I was changed to have more of a dead scent to get your attention. I'm Human."

"Then you couldn't understand, can you? I got my money, but I'm really doing this for fun. L.A. has a great assortment of vampires, every single one a treat. This is a hell of a lot better than Mumbai."

"There are vampires all over the fucking place. Want variety? Try New York or London. You're no longer welcome here."

It laughed, a noise of a beak tapping on a tin can. He showed a mouthful of teeth that could have been made of granite. "How do you plan to stop me, Human? Sue?"

Logan let his arms fall loose and popped his claws. "I have other ways of disarming you."

That pecking/chuckling noise got worse, and his eyes gleamed like oil. "Is that all? Pathetic. What are you gonna do, pick my teeth for me?"

Bob suddenly appeared behind him, clearing his throat. "Hello Thom. Do you like existing?"

The Kalivrana stopped laughing, and its plumage seemed to stiffen. "Oh shit. You."

"Yep. This is my territory. Are you going now, or does my friend here cut you up for chum?"

His cloak fluttered around him like a giant pair of wings. "Christ, Kama, I thought you were still in Australia …"

"I'm in a lot of different places. And you know, I haven't seen Ganesha for a while. Shall we pay him a visit?"

His wings fluttered again. "I'm going." And with that, he exploded into dozens of different ink black birds and flew off into the night.

Logan looked back at Bob suspiciously. "You knew it?"

"There's a couple different Kalivranas running around this dimension. I didn't know it was him 'til I saw him."

He didn't know if he bought that, but he didn't see why Bob would have sat on that knowledge. "Wait a sec. He called you Kama, and you threatened him with Ganesha. Does that mean the Kali in his name is significant?"

Bob grinned slyly. "Good on ya, mate! Yeah, it's significant. Kali made 'em."

"Made them to kill vampires? Why?"

Bob shrugged. "Honestly? Probably shits and giggles. Kali was like that."

Logan was getting the impression that most of the gods were like that, but he kept that observation to himself.

* * *

When Logan got back to Bob's place, he was so exhausted he decided to just sack out now and move to a cheap hotel room later on. Besides, Bob was still at the bar, putting the glamour back up, so he wouldn't be home for ages.

Still, he didn't expect to fall asleep so fast. Nor did he expect to be thrown right into a dream.

But almost immediately he realized it wasn't a dream at all. He was sitting at a table at an outdoor café, and judging by the buildings around him and the cars in the street, he guessed he was somewhere in England. Not London, but hardly a small city. It was sunny but not too warm, and he looked around, trying to figure out if he'd ever been here before. He was pretty sure he hadn't.

Suddenly a man sat down in the chair across from him. He was early middle aged, blandly good looking but rather unremarkable, with a thick head of dark brown hair swept back to reveal a high forehead and pale brown eyes. Logan had never seen him before in his life.

Before he could ask him who the hell he was, the man looked at him with the faintest of ironic smiles, and said, "We have a problem. You're looking for me, and I really don't want to be found."

It was the voice that gave him away. In real life it had probably changed due to the vocal chords of the man he inhabited, but here, in a mindscape, it was the same as it always was.

Logan felt a coldness grip him, and he just sat there for a moment, not sure what to say or do.

It was Xavier.


	10. Chapter 10

10

The shock was just wearing off when Xavier said, "I really wouldn't throw over the table. This is a mindscape, you know. No action is a surprise."

"Wanna bet?" If he was really Xavier, then he'd know he actually proved in a mindscape he could react instinctually enough to surprise the telepath; the key was being so angry that you entered a kind of Zen state, and thought no longer proceeded action - there was just action, no thoughts at all. Just like when Heydon trapped him in his own mind after taking over his body, and tried to trap Jeannie and Xavier as well - Xavier and Jeannie only got away because Heydon never expected Logan to be so enraged by his own captivity (and his threats against Jean) that he'd bite a big fucking chunk out of his neck. It was also when he felt Xavier really started to take him seriously, because he saw for himself that he could beat telepaths, and because he saw when he was really fucking pissed, he was little better than an animal. Scott had been right about that.

(But he would have killed anyone who hurt Jeannie, with whatever he had. That fucker had picked the wrong target.)

Xavier grimaced and dipped his head. "I know your training has made you able to occasionally beat a telepath, but you have no reason to be angry at me, Logan."

"The fuck I don't," Logan growled. "You've made everyone think you're dead. You've abandoned those kids at your fucking mansion. And you made me -" He paused and slammed his hand down on the table, hard enough to make something crack. The imaginary crowd around them reacted slightly, but Xavier didn't. "Do you know what I had to fucking do, you prick?!"

He had the good grace to look contrite. "I know, I'm sorry … I came back long after it was over. It took me a while to settle into consciousness in a new body. And the body was slightly atrophied too, so I've been in physical therapy. I couldn't have helped."

"I don't give a fuck. It's unforgivable."

"You did the right thing, Logan. I know it doesn't seem that way -"

"Shut up," he snarled, low and deadly.

" - and I know you loved her, but -"

"Shut the fuck up!" He roared, popping his claws and driving them through the table, shattering it as he stood up and kicked the halves aside. Xavier remained seated, simply gazing up at him as if nothing had happened. "I should fucking kill you!"

"In a mindscape it won't make a difference," Xavier pointed out. "It might make you feel better -"

"Yeah, it might."

"But it won't change anything. Please sit down. I'd like a chance to explain myself."

"No! I'm tired of all your goddamn bullshit! First, you fucked with Jeannie's mind and didn't tell anyone, even when Camaxtli got its claws into her and you knew he could use that against us and her! Then you had the fucking gall to act like _I_ was the one out of line for thinking you were wrong!"

"I admit I could and should have handled things better, but what I did to Jean wasn't the same as what was done to you -"

Logan grabbed him by the throat and hauled him to his feet, bringing his claws level with his eyes. He was so angry he was shaking with rage. "Mindfucking is mindfucking, Chuck. Give me all the greater good bullshit you want, but somebody somewhere decided mindfucking me was for the greater good as well. And they never stopped. So don't you dare tell me that I should just accept it and move on, 'cause I won't."

He looked at him levelly, and because this was a mindscape, he had no idea if Xavier was genuinely scared and covering or what. But if he wasn't scared, he should have been. "All right, I'm sorry. I wasn't … it was never my intention to hurt her or you. What was done to you was unconscionable."

"What about Jean?"

"She was like my daughter, Logan. I would never hurt her like that."

"But you did hurt her. And even when Camaxtli was clearly singling her out, you never said anything. You've been lyin' since I've known you, you manipulative fuck."

Xavier kept making eye contact, perhaps afraid to look away, perhaps attempting to "reach" him. "My intent was never malicious."

"Bullshit!" He threw him back down in his chair, so violently he had no idea how it didn't fall over and send him spilling to the sidewalk, except this was a mindscape and the laws of physics were different. "I was just brought in to do the dirty work, wasn't I? You so magnanimously let me in to your little group because you needed a thug."

He almost smirked, but managed to suppress the urge. Which was good, because Logan would have carved it off his face. "Magneto told you that, didn't he?"

"Actually, Mystique did. And Scott. It was the rare time they agreed."

"Logan, you know better than to believe anything Mystique says, and as for Scott … you know the troubles between you two better than I do."

"You accusin' your little golden boy of lying?"

Finally that got a reaction out of him. His eyes narrowed, and a look of annoyance flashed across his face. "No. You two never got along, which was a shame, as I'm sure you both could have learned from each other."

"I don't wanna know how to be anal retentive."

He sighed heavily, but rather than even attempt to lecture him, he moved on. "I brought you in because you were a good person, Logan. You were -"

Xavier had to stop because Logan was laughing so hard there was no way to hear over it. By the time Logan managed to get a hold of himself and calm down, he had tears running down his face. He wiped them away with the back of his hand. "Man, thanks for that. I haven't had that good of a laugh in ages."

"Do you really think that little of yourself? Do you really think you're not a good person?"

"Just stop it, okay? Blowing sunshine up my ass ain't gonna help ya, so you can knock it off."

"I'm not lying."

"Of course you are. We both know I'm a killer, okay? So let's just stop pretending."

"You have killed, but you're not a killer."

"That makes no fucking sense."

"It does, and I think you know what I mean."

Logan retracted his claws and folded his arms across his chest, but he didn't move away or sit down. His anger was slowing morphing into a weary kind of disgust. "Have you ever been truthful? At any point?"

Xavier sighed, giving him a disappointed look. "Of course I have. I wanted to make this world a better place. I wanted Humans and Mutants to live together without fear or prejudice."

"So why bring in me? Those that know of me fear and hate me. I'm a liability. And you knew - you _knew_ - what I was, who I was, and you never told me."

He looked down at the sidewalk and shook his head. "You weren't ready for that. The truth at that time would have hurt you more."

"That wasn't your decision to make. You took in a known assassin - why the fuck would you do that if you didn't expect me to kill for you?"

Xavier ran a hand through his unaccustomed hair, and gave himself a minute to gather his thoughts before he told him, "Do you want to know the whole story? Fine. Yes, as soon as Scott called back to report that they had rescued Rogue along with a man that she said called himself Wolverine, I knew who you were. Scott and Ororo and Marie couldn't, because they weren't aware of the rumors in the mutant underground, the talk of a government sponsored mutant assassin called Wolverine who could kill anything that breathed. I think you would have enjoyed some of the rumors - some had you as able to turn into a mist, one that could slip under doors and invade lungs, killing a person from the inside out."

"Sounds like they mixed me up with Chimera."

"Yes, I suspect they mixed you up with several of them. Anyway, my first impulse was to tell Scott to leave you there, but I must admit I was intrigued. I figured the government - whichever government you worked for; that wasn't clear - wanted Rogue too, although I wasn't certain why. I thought it would be good to bring you back so I could look into your mind and see why, as well as see what made you tick, why you would kill your own kind." He paused, clasping his hands nervously in his lap. "As soon as you were brought in I did look into your mind, Logan. Not for long, though, as I was a little overwhelmed by what I found. I've never encountered a mind so badly violated; I must admit, I wondered if you were sane."

He snorted derisively. "Join the fucking club."

"But before I left I searched your more recent memories, trying to glean what you wanted with Rogue. I discovered it was random chance and she sought you out, but before I left, I caught one of your thoughts while you were fighting Sabretooth: _'If he touches the girl, I'm going to kill him'_. That was instinctual, pure gut reaction … and that's why I brought you into the institute."

He glared at him. "'Cause I wanted to kill Sabretooth?"

"Because your first instinct was to protect the girl - not to kill, but protect. Horrible things have been done to you, Logan, body and mind, and if you were a cynical killing machine I honestly couldn't blame you. I wouldn't blame you if you turned your back on humanity as a whole. But you had your humanity intact, and moreover, you wanted to protect others from being hurt. That puts you in a rarer category than you might imagine."

Logan continued to glower down at him. "So 'cause I'm not quite amoral enough to stand by and watch a girl get hurt, you decided I was worth saving? Is this where I get on my knees and thank you?"

"I was being honest with you. There's no need for sarcasm."

"There's lots of reason for sarcasm. Am I supposed to think this is the real story? How many do I get to hear before you stop telling me the "real story"?"

Xavier returned a glare, which was good, because at least that was an honest reaction. "That's it, Logan. There is no other story."

"And you've never mentioned it before because ..?"

"I didn't think you'd like me having trespassed into your mind."

"Considering everything else you've done, that's pretty minor."

He sighed wearily and shook his head. "I'm not your enemy."

"You're not my friend either. I don't know what you are."

"We shouldn't be at odds."

"You're supposed to be dead. What the fuck did you do?"

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, looking off to the side as he crossed his arms over his chest. "I didn't know that it would work; it was a last resort. His body was alive but he was brain dead; I didn't take over a living man, just a wasting body."

"And you let us all believe you were dead."

"Not intentionally. I knew you thought I was dead, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized it would be better for everybody."

"You mean you."

He threw his hands up in the air. "No. I knew I was a lightning rod for controversy and trouble, which is not what I wanted to be. I was endangering the school and everyone in it. This wasn't how I intended to drop out, but this is how I ended up."

He stared at him in disbelief. "And you let everyone think you were dead."

"It was easier that way. Is that what you wanted me to admit? Yes, it was. I intended to reveal myself to some people, but I discovered that life has gone on quite nicely without me, and I think it's best that I remain beyond their lives. I can still monitor, I can still help, but I no longer will add to the problems." He smirked gently, his eyes crinkling in a familiar manner that looked funny on someone else's face. "You know, I assumed that someone might eventually track me down, but I never thought it would have been you. I should have guessed though, right? You used to be in military intelligence, didn't you? What really impressed me is you still have connections, just different ones."

That put Logan on edge. "Srina. You didn't hurt her, did you?"

"Good lord, you think that little of me? Of course I didn't hurt her. She never got close to me, because invisible she might be, but no one's invisible to telepathy."

"Except vampires. And Bob."

"Well yes, them. Perhaps I should have specified Humans." He got serious again, all warmth dropping from his expression. "I can't have people knowing I'm still alive right now."

"Ah, finally." Logan sank down into his chair, slumping against it with a deceptively casual, open posture. "This is where you threaten me."

A stern look flashed through his eyes, and again it was odd to see in someone else's face. "No it isn't. I thought we could talk."

"And what happens if I disagree with you? Don't tell me - mind wipe."

He scowled at him. "No."

"Bob would probably know. He'd restore what you took. He could do more than that."

"I have no intention of altering your mind, Logan."

"He could kill you. He wouldn't even hafta try. All he'd have to do is think about you. The briefest mental contact, and your brain explodes out your ears. I've seen it done; it's not pretty."

Xavier's scowl deepened, making his host body look older. "You don't have to threaten me. I have no intention of hurting you."

"And I have no reason to trust you, do I?"

Xavier hung his head down, hands nervously scrubbing his face. "What can I do to regain your trust, Logan? We shouldn't be at odds, not now."

Logan raised an eyebrow at the "not now" comment, but knew better than to take the bait. As far as he knew, Xavier had been playing him - playing all of them - for a hell of a long time. Yeah, the guy had saved his ass once or twice, but goddamn it, was it for his own purpose? In retrospect, he wondered if all of this was just some bizarre power play between him and Magneto. They had been just friends, right? "You could tell me if you knew, if that was the plan all along."

Xavier looked genuinely confused. "What are you talking about?"

"Jean." He wasn't sure if he was angry or scared, but his heart felt like it was pounding in his head, making him feel vaguely sick. "Did you know I'd have to kill her? Did you set me up?"


	11. Chapter 11

11

Xavier looked almost painfully uncomfortable, which was an answer in itself. "I didn't know," he said, hesitating on every word. "For certain. But I knew if things went too far you'd probably be the one to do it, to protect others. I was hoping that Jean - or Camaxtli, whoever it was that had control - didn't have it in her to kill two of the men she loved."

Logan sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hanging his head low. He didn't know if there ever would have been an answer to that question that he would have liked. Probably not. He was smart enough to know never to ask a question that you didn't want to hear an answer to, but sometimes you couldn't help it.

"Logan -"

"Don't. Whatever you're gonna say, just don't. I'm not ready to hear it." He unfolded from the chair and stood up, looking down at Xavier. "I'm done here. Let me go."

"You have to -"

"I don't hafta to do shit. Look, I ain't gonna rat you out to the others, not yet anyways. You should really contact them yourself, you know? Stop this chickenshit hiding. You don't hafta return to the mansion, you don't hafta have a fucking press conference, just let some of the people who believed in you and still do that you're not dead. There's been so much death recently they'll probably be relieved."

Xavier gazed up at him with foreign eyes, and Logan wondered who this guy had been when he was alive. No matter; Xavier was probably pretending to be someone entirely different now. He knew he would be if he were him. "What about you?"

He snorted, finding that almost funny. "What about me? Fuck me. As you said, I got new connections now; I'll be fine. I always am, right? I heal."

"Even from this?"

Logan shrugged. "Don't know, don't care." That was kind of a lie, and surely Xavier knew that, but now was not the time to discuss it.

"As you wish," Xavier sighed, standing up. That must have been weird for him, being able to stand after being paralyzed for so long. Hell, he was younger too - that was probably a bonus. "We still need to talk."

"Some other time. Not soon."

Xavier held out his hand as if to shake, but thought better of it and just folded his arms across his chest. "Don't give up on them because of me. I'm not your enemy, Logan."

"I know. But I don't know what you are."

It seemed an odd place to leave things, but Logan woke up back in Bob's place, feeling oddly disoriented.

Life was just too fucking weird sometimes.

* * *

You knew your life was permanently fucked when sitting in a dingy demon bar with a vampire and a fallen god - and a pile of slime demon taxi driver and a church leader/alcoholic demon with crystal eyes at the next table - seemed normal. Yeah, that was a bad sign. He hadn't even included the empathic jukebox.

Logan told them about his bizarre encounter with Xavier. Luckily, he'd found an email from Srina in his inbox this morning, saying she thought she found him but wasn't actually able to confirm she found him, leading her to suspect he was playing mind games with her. He told her he was, and she could drop it now, as he'd heard from the guy, and he was really one to avoid.

Angel was of the opinion that Xavier was a good guy - sneaky perhaps, but not bad - and Bob figured he wasn't malicious, but certainly manipulative. "But honestly, you can't trust psychics," Bob insisted. "I don't even blame 'em, really. I can see bits and pieces of the future, but I try hard not to. It's kinda creepy, actually. There's just too much temptation to play god." For no reason Logan could see, Bob was wearing a t-shirt advertising "Old Bob Strong Pale Ale", and he had no idea if that was a real beer or not. He'd have asked, but that would have felt like encouraging him.

Angel stared at Bob in that deadpan way of his, pretending to ignore his cup of goat's blood. "Bob, you are a god."

"Only in a technical sense."

Logan rubbed his eyes, and wondered why someone hadn't made a reality show of this yet.

Telling them had been his back up plan. If Xavier decided to retroactively erase his existence from his mind, it wouldn't matter - he couldn't touch Angel's mind, and he couldn't go anywhere near Bob. The information was out where he couldn't touch it. Someone would always know he was really alive.

Angel shook his head faintly, and looked at him. "What are you going to do, Logan?"

"I think I'm going back to Vancouver for a while." He'd gotten a call this morning - well, more like a message on his voice mail - from Faith. It seemed that Tony was coming back to Vancouver for a while, and she thought maybe they could hook up if he was in town. It was good to hear her voice again; he missed her. All her issues aside - and what was up with fucking Xander? She must have been mentally ill at the time - she was a lot of fun. He'd been lacking fun for quite some time. "Then I don't know what I'm gonna do."

"Say hi to Faith for us," Bob said, giving him a sly smile before taking a drink of his beer. That was probably an example of his mind reading thing, although he could have been pretending to be psychic.

He grimaced at Bob but gave Angel a measured look. "Mind looking after Rogue for a while?"

Angel almost shrugged, but thought better of it and shook his head. "I don't mind exploiting the mutant talent pool. It usually surprises the hell out of demons. And she could be really useful, assuming she wants to keep her powers."

"She does for now," Bob interjected. "I guess beating the shit out of Reignet changed her mind about giving them up."

Logan nodded. "Kicking someone's ass is fun, as long as you're one doin' the kicking." Well it was!

Bob smirked in agreement. "She asked me if I could make it so she could actually control her abilities, turn them on and off."

"Sure the fuck you can. Do that." Logan took a gulp of beer, wondering why the fuck they hadn't thought of that sooner. It seemed like such a no-brainer now, so obvious, and yet … nope, they all missed it. Goddamn, they could all be such idiots sometimes.

Bob gave him a sarcastically arch look. "Tellin' me my job now, mate?"

"He's your avatar," Angel said. "Why not?"

Ah, there was nothing like a little back up.

Logan finished his beer and said his goodbyes, getting on his way. He'd already told Bren not to tell Rogue, that he'd just call her from the road, as he was afraid she might actually want to go with him since she seemed to be in full restless mode. Not that he blamed her, but he didn't want any extra passengers on this ride.

He straddled his motorcycle and revved it as he took one more look around at the orange tinted sky of Los Angeles at sundown. It was grimy and polluted and overcrowded, and frankly separating it from reality was probably a damn good idea. But it wasn't typical, which was probably the highest complement he could give it.

Logan headed off down the road, into the night, wondering what new disaster he'd find, and not really concerned about it.

He'd find out when he got there. Meaning, for a long, blissful moment, he had nothing to worry about.

* * *

_The End_


End file.
